---
title: "I saw a man on a hill with a telescope" is ambiguous: the telescope… — Grammar puzzles, part one · tree and pragmatics
description: "I saw a man on a hill with a telescope" is ambiguous: the telescope could be yours or the man's. Who acts: pasts, telescope. A sentence of the lesson «Grammar puzzles, part one» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grammar puzzles, part one, sentence 12

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"I saw a man on a hill with a telescope" is ambiguous: the telescope could be yours or the man's.

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**Who acts:** pasts, telescope · **What happens:** see, be · **To what, where:** man, hill, yours · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Grammar puzzles, part one» 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 (pasts, telescope), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:011-grammar-puzzles-part-one.lesson:12
# text = "I saw a man on a hill with a telescope" is ambiguous: the telescope could be yours or the man's.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 011-grammar-puzzles-part-one.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 ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	on	on	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	hill	hill	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
9	with	with	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	telescope	telescope	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	_
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
13	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
14	ambiguous	ambiguous	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	parataxis	_	_
15	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	20	punct	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	telescope	telescope	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nsubj	_	_
18	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
19	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	cop	_	_
20	yours	your	PRON	PRP	Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=14:advcl
21	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
22	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	conj	_	_
24	's	's	PART	POS	_	23	case	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=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 | **see** *in a quote* | past | the pasts *= past* | a man |  | a hill with a telescope |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | present |  |  |  |  |  | ambiguous *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **is a** | could | the telescope | yours |  |  |  |  | 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:011-grammar-puzzles-part-one.lesson:12`.

**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 ×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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- ← previous: [Grammar puzzles, part one, 11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/11/)
- next →: [Grammar puzzles, part one, 13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/13/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/)