---
title: Old English looks like a secret code today; the famous poem "Beowulf… — Where English came from · tree and pragmatics
description: Old English looks like a secret code today; the famous poem "Beowulf" begins "Hwæt! Who acts: Old English, famous poem. A sentence of the lesson «Where English came from» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/22-where-english-came-from/1/)

<!-- 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/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / [Where English came from](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/22-where-english-came-from/) / 1

# Where English came from, sentence 1

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Old English looks like a secret code today; the famous poem "Beowulf" begins "Hwæt!

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Old English, famous poem · **What happens:** look, begin · **To what, where:** Hwæt

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Where English came from» 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 (Old English, famous poem), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:022-where-english-came-from.lesson:1
# text = Old English looks like a secret code today; the famous poem "Beowulf" begins "Hwæt!
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 022-where-english-came-from.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 ×1
1	Old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	English	English	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	looks	look	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	like	like	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	secret	secret	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	code	code	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
8	today	today	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl:unmarked	_	_
9	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	16	punct	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	famous	famous	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	poem	poem	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
13	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	_
14	Beowulf	Beowulf	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	appos	_	_
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	14	punct	_	_
16	begins	begin	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=3:conj
17	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	18	punct	_	_
18	Hwæt	Hwæt	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	_
19	!	!	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 | **look** | present | Old English |  |  |  | today | like a secret code | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **begin** | present | the famous poem | Hwæt |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hwæt=Eventuality |

<!-- .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:language:022-where-english-came-from.lesson:1`.

**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 ×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: [Where English came from, 0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/22-where-english-came-from/0/)
- next →: [Where English came from, 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/22-where-english-came-from/4/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/22-where-english-came-from/)