---
title: Modern style guides write decades as "the 1990s" with no apostrophe;… — The apostrophe war · tree and pragmatics
description: Modern style guides write decades as "the 1990s" with no apostrophe; in "the '90s" the apostrophe shows the missing "19". Who acts: Modern style guides, apostrophe. A sentence of the lesson «The apostrophe war» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmati
---

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# The apostrophe war, sentence 12

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Modern style guides write decades as "the 1990s" with no apostrophe; in "the '90s" the apostrophe shows the missing "19".

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Modern style guides, apostrophe · **What happens:** write, show · **To what, where:** missing 19

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This is a sentence of the lesson «The apostrophe war» 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 (Modern style guides, apostrophe), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:015-the-apostrophe-war.lesson:12
# text = Modern style guides write decades as "the 1990s" with no apostrophe; in "the '90s" the apostrophe shows the missing "19".
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 015-the-apostrophe-war.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 ×2, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	Modern	modern	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
2	style	style	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
3	guides	guide	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	write	write	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	decades	decade	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
6	as	as	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	1990s	1990s	NOUN	NNS	Number=Ptan|NumForm=Combi|NumType=Card	4	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=5:nmod
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
11	with	with	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	13	det	_	_
13	apostrophe	apostrophe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=9:nmod
14	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	_
15	in	in	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
16	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	19	punct	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
18	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	19	punct	_	_
19	90s	90s	NOUN	NNS	Number=Ptan|NumForm=Combi|NumType=Card	23	obl	_	_
20	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	19	punct	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	apostrophe	apostrophe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	nsubj	_	_
23	shows	show	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:conj
24	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	27	det	_	_
25	missing	missing	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	amod	_	_
26	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	27	punct	_	_
27	19	19	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	obj	_	_
28	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	27	punct	_	_
29	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	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 | **write** | present | Modern style guides |  |  |  | decade | as the 1990s; with no apostrophe | vn create-26.4-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Agent as 1990s=Attribute |
| 2 | **show** | present | the apostrophe | the missing 19 |  |  |  | in the 90s | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP PP.recipient PP.theme»: agent=Agent 19=Patient in 90s=Topic |

<!-- .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:015-the-apostrophe-war.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): R5-strong ×2, 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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