---
title: Plurals ending in s add just an apostrophe for belonging: ladies', t… — The apostrophe war · tree and pragmatics
description: Plurals ending in s add just an apostrophe for belonging: ladies', the girls' changing room. Who acts: Plurals, ladies. A sentence of the lesson «The apostrophe war» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The apostrophe war, sentence 16

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Plurals ending in s add just an apostrophe for belonging: ladies', the girls' changing room.

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**Who acts:** Plurals, ladies · **What happens:** end, add, change · **To what, where:** s, apostrophe, room

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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 (Plurals, ladies), 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:16
# text = Plurals ending in s add just an apostrophe for belonging: ladies', the girls' changing room.
# 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): R7-rel-agree ×3
1	Plurals	plural	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
2	ending	end	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	1	acl	_	_
3	in	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	s	s	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	_
5	add	add	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	just	just	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
7	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	apostrophe	apostrophe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
9	for	for	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=10:mark|HaikuPos=SCONJ:IN:_
10	belonging	belong	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=8:acl|HaikuPos=VERB:VBG:VerbForm=Ger
11	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	12	punct	_	_
12	ladies	lady	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	_
13	',	',	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	girls	girl	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	nmod:poss	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=18:nsubj
16	'	's	PART	POS	_	15	case	_	_
17	changing	change	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	12	acl	_	_
18	room	room	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **end** | gerund | Plurals *not said here* |  |  | s |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |
| 2 | **add** *speech: assert* | present | Plurals | a apostrophe |  |  |  | for belonging | vn mix-22.1-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent apostrophe=Patient |
| 3 | **change** | gerund | ladies *not said here* | the girls's room |  |  |  |  | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent room=Patient |

<!-- .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:16`.

**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): R7-rel-agree ×3. **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: [The apostrophe war, 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/15-the-apostrophe-war/15/)
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- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/15-the-apostrophe-war/)