---
title: Plurals never need an apostrophe: a shop sign "Tomatoe's 50p" is wro… — Plurals that make no sense: mice, sheep and geese · tree and pragmatics
description: Plurals never need an apostrophe: a shop sign "Tomatoe's 50p" is wrong; it should be "Tomatoes 50p". Who acts: Plurals, apostrophe. A sentence of the lesson «Plurals that make no sense: mice, sheep and geese» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics
---

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# Plurals that make no sense: mice, sheep and geese, sentence 4

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Plurals never need an apostrophe: a shop sign "Tomatoe's 50p" is wrong; it should be "Tomatoes 50p".

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**Who acts:** Plurals, apostrophe · **What happens:** not need, be · **To what, where:** apostrophe, Tomatoes

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Plurals that make no sense: mice, sheep and geese» of the language 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 (Plurals, apostrophe), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:010-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese.lesson:4
# text = Plurals never need an apostrophe: a shop sign "Tomatoe's 50p" is wrong; it should be "Tomatoes 50p".
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 010-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese.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, R6-punct-agree ×1
1	Plurals	plural	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
2	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	3	advmod	_	_
3	need	need	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	apostrophe	apostrophe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	9	punct	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	shop	shop	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
9	sign	sign	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	appos	_	_
10	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=9:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:'':_
11	Tomatoe	Tomatoe	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	nmod:poss	_	_
12	's	's	PART	POS	_	11	case	_	_
13	50	50	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	14	nummod	_	_
14	p	p	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	appos	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=17:nsubj
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	14	punct	_	_
16	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
17	wrong	wrong	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	appos	_	_
18	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	23	punct	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	23	nsubj	_	_
20	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	23	aux	_	_
21	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	23	cop	_	_
22	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	23	punct	_	_
23	Tomatoes	tomato	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	appos	_	_
24	50	50	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	25	nummod	_	_
25	p	p	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	list	_	_
26	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	23	punct	_	_
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	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 | **not** **need** | present | Plurals | a apostrophe |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot apostrophe=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | present |  |  |  |  |  | wrong *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **is a** *in a quote* | should | apostrophe | Tomatoes |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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.

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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:language:010-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese.lesson:4`.

**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, R6-punct-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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