---
title: Stone Age people in Britain did not write; writing came to Britain w… — How writing began: from tally marks and pictures… · tree and pragmatics
description: Stone Age people in Britain did not write; writing came to Britain with the Romans about 2,000 years ago, so Taffy and Tegumai in Surrey could not really have done it. Who acts: Age people, writing, Taffy. A sentence of the lesson «How writing began: from tally marks and pictures to the alphabet» of
---

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# How writing began: from tally marks and pictures to the alphabet, sentence 21

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Stone Age people in Britain did not write; writing came to Britain with the Romans about 2,000 years ago, so Taffy and Tegumai in Surrey could not really have done it.

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**Who acts:** Age people, writing, Taffy · **What happens:** not write, come, not do · **To what, where:** Britain, writing

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This is a sentence of the lesson «How writing began: from tally marks and pictures to the alphabet» of the history course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Age people, writing, Taffy), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:history:082-how-writing-began-from-tally-marks-and-pictures-to-the-alphabet.lesson:21
# text = Stone Age people in Britain did not write; writing came to Britain with the Romans about 2,000 years ago, so Taffy and Tegumai in Surrey could not really have done it.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = history
# lesson = 082-how-writing-began-from-tally-marks-and-pictures-to-the-alphabet.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×2, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	Stone	Stone	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	compound	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=2:compound|HaikuPos=NOUN:NN:Number=Sing
2	Age	age	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
3	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
4	in	in	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	Britain	Britain	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
6	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
7	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
8	write	write	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
9	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	writing	write	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
11	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=8:conj
12	to	to	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	Britain	Britain	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
14	with	with	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	Romans	Roman	PROPN	NNPS	Number=Plur	11	obl	_	_
17	about	about	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	2,000	2000	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	19	nummod	_	_
19	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obl:unmarked	_	_
20	ago	ago	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	32	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=23:punct
22	so	so	ADV	RB	_	32	advmod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=32:cc|HaikuPos=CCONJ:CC:_
23	Taffy	Taffy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	32	nsubj	_	_
24	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	25	cc	_	_
25	Tegumai	Tegumai	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	23	conj	_	_
26	in	in	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
27	Surrey	Surrey	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	23	nmod	_	_
28	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	32	aux	_	_
29	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	32	advmod	_	_
30	really	really	ADV	RB	_	32	advmod	_	_
31	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	32	aux	_	_
32	done	do	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	8	conj	_	_
33	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	32	obj	_	_
34	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **write** | past · do-support | Age people in Britain |  |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **come** | past | writing |  |  | Britain |  | with the Romans; ago *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to britain=Initial\_Location |
| 3 | **not** **do** | could · perfect | Taffy in Surrey and Tegumai | writing *= write* |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:history:082-how-writing-began-from-tally-marks-and-pictures-to-the-alphabet.lesson:21`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×2, R8-pos-agree ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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