---
title: For centuries Chinese officials were chosen by hard written exams on… — Ancient China: dynasties, the First Emperor and… · tree and pragmatics
description: For centuries Chinese officials were chosen by hard written exams on classic books, not only by birth. Who acts: written exams. A sentence of the lesson «Ancient China: dynasties, the First Emperor and the Great Wall» of the history course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pr
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/9-ancient-china-dynasties-the-first-emperor-and-the-great-wall/19/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/) / [Ancient China: dynasties, the First Em…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/9-ancient-china-dynasties-the-first-emperor-and-the-great-wall/) / 19

# Ancient China: dynasties, the First Emperor and the Great Wall, sentence 19

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
For centuries Chinese officials were chosen by hard written exams on classic books, not only by birth.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** written exams · **What happens:** choose, write · **To what, where:** Chinese officials

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Ancient China: dynasties, the First Emperor and the Great Wall» 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 (written exams), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:history:009-ancient-china-dynasties-the-first-emperor-and-the-great-wall.lesson:19
# text = For centuries Chinese officials were chosen by hard written exams on classic books, not only by birth.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = history
# lesson = 009-ancient-china-dynasties-the-first-emperor-and-the-great-wall.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): R5-strong ×1
1	For	for	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	centuries	century	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	_
3	Chinese	Chinese	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	officials	official	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj:pass	_	_
5	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux:pass	_	_
6	chosen	choose	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
7	by	by	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	hard	hard	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	9	advmod	_	_
9	written	write	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	amod	_	_
10	exams	exam	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	_
11	on	on	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	classic	classic	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	books	book	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nmod	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
15	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	18	advmod	_	_
16	only	only	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
17	by	by	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	birth	birth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=10:conj
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **choose** | past · passive | written exams on classic books | Chinese officials |  |  | century | by birth | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent subject=Theme |
| 2 | **write** | participle |  |  |  |  |  | hard *property* | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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:009-ancient-china-dynasties-the-first-emperor-and-the-great-wall.lesson:19`.

**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): R5-strong ×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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Ancient China: dynasties, the First Em…, 18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/9-ancient-china-dynasties-the-first-emperor-and-the-great-wall/18/)
- next →: [Ancient China: paper, silk, the Silk R…, 0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/10-ancient-china-paper-silk-the-silk-road-and-confucius/0/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/9-ancient-china-dynasties-the-first-emperor-and-the-great-wall/)