---
title: Mandarin and Cantonese sound so different that speakers can't unders… — Mandarin compared with English · tree and pragmatics
description: Mandarin and Cantonese sound so different that speakers can't understand each other's speech, though they share much of the writing system. Who acts: Mandarin, speakers. A sentence of the lesson «Mandarin compared with English» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree
---

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# Mandarin compared with English, sentence 15

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Mandarin and Cantonese sound so different that speakers can't understand each other's speech, though they share much of the writing system.

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**Who acts:** Mandarin, speakers · **What happens:** sound, not understand, share · **To what, where:** speech, much

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Mandarin compared with English» 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 (Mandarin, speakers), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:034-mandarin-compared-with-english.lesson:15
# text = Mandarin and Cantonese sound so different that speakers can't understand each other's speech, though they share much of the writing system.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 034-mandarin-compared-with-english.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): no change
1	Mandarin	Mandarin	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
2	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
3	Cantonese	Cantonese	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	1	conj	_	_
4	sound	sound	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	so	so	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	different	different	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	xcomp	_	_
7	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
8	speakers	speaker	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
9	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	understand	understand	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	advcl	_	_
12	each	each	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	13	det	_	_
13	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	nmod:poss	_	_
14	's	's	PART	POS	_	13	case	_	_
15	speech	speech	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
17	though	though	SCONJ	IN	_	19	mark	_	_
18	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
19	share	share	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
20	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	obj	_	_
21	of	of	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
22	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	24	det	_	_
23	writing	writing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	compound	_	_
24	system	system	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obl	_	_
25	.	.	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 | **sound** | present | Mandarin and Cantonese |  |  |  |  | different *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **not** **understand** | can | speakers | each other's speech |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer speech=Stimulus |
| 3 | **share** | present | speakers *= speaker* | much |  |  |  |  | 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:034-mandarin-compared-with-english.lesson:15`.

**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): no change. **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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