--- title: "Starve" comes from Old English "steorfan", to die, like German "ste… — Words that changed their meaning · tree and pragmatics description: "Starve" comes from Old English "steorfan", to die, like German "sterben"; it narrowed to die of hunger, and "I'm starving" today usually just means very hungry. Who acts: sterben, I, starving. A sentence of the lesson «Words that changed their meaning» of the language course of Mova's primary schoo --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/38-words-that-changed-their-meaning/11/) [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/) / [Words that changed their meaning](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/38-words-that-changed-their-meaning/) / 11 # Words that changed their meaning, sentence 11 "Starve" comes from Old English "steorfan", to die, like German "sterben"; it narrowed to die of hunger, and "I'm starving" today usually just means very hungry. **Who acts:** sterben, I, starving · **What happens:** starve, come, die, narrow, mean · **To what, where:** steorfan, Old English · **Speech:** someone speaks here This is a sentence of the lesson «Words that changed their meaning» 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 (sterben, I, starving), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree. ## The tree {#tree} ```conllu # sent_id = school:language:038-words-that-changed-their-meaning.lesson:11 # text = "Starve" comes from Old English "steorfan", to die, like German "sterben"; it narrowed to die of hunger, and "I'm starving" today usually just means very hungry. # source = school lesson (ours) # course = language # lesson = 038-words-that-changed-their-meaning.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): R3-conj-first ×1, R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×3, R7-rel-agree ×2 1 " " PUNCT `` _ 2 punct _ _ 2 Starve starve VERB VB Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin 4 nsubj _ _ 3 " " PUNCT '' _ 2 punct _ Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=4:punct 4 comes come VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 0 root _ _ 5 from from ADP IN _ 7 case _ _ 6 Old old ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 7 amod _ _ 7 English English PROPN NNP Number=Sing 4 obl _ _ 8 " " PUNCT `` _ 9 punct _ Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=7:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:'':_ 9 steorfan steorfan NOUN NN Number=Sing 4 obl _ _ 10 " " PUNCT '' _ 9 punct _ _ 11 , , PUNCT , _ 13 punct _ _ 12 to to PART TO _ 13 mark _ _ 13 die die VERB VB VerbForm=Inf 9 appos _ _ 14 , , PUNCT , _ 18 punct _ _ 15 like like ADP IN _ 18 case _ _ 16 German German ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 18 amod _ _ 17 " " PUNCT `` _ 18 punct _ _ 18 sterben sterben NOUN NN Number=Sing 4 obl _ _ 19 " " PUNCT '' _ 18 punct _ _ 20 ; ; PUNCT , _ 22 punct _ _ 21 it it PRON PRP Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs 22 nsubj _ _ 22 narrowed narrow VERB VBD Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin 4 parataxis _ Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:conj 23 to to PART TO _ 24 mark _ _ 24 die die VERB VB VerbForm=Inf 22 xcomp _ _ 25 of of ADP IN _ 26 case _ _ 26 hunger hunger NOUN NN Number=Sing 24 obl _ _ 27 , , PUNCT , _ 32 punct _ _ 28 and and CCONJ CC _ 37 cc _ _ 29 " " PUNCT `` _ 32 punct _ _ 30 I I PRON PRP Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs 32 nsubj _ _ 31 'm be AUX VBP Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 32 aux _ _ 32 starving starve VERB VBG Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part 37 csubj _ _ 33 " " PUNCT '' _ 32 punct _ Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=2:punct 34 today today NOUN NN Number=Sing 32 obl:unmarked _ Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=37:obl:unmarked 35 usually usually ADV RB _ 37 advmod _ _ 36 just just ADV RB _ 37 advmod _ _ 37 means mean VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 4 conj _ Agree=R3-conj-first|Haiku=22:conj 38 very very ADV RB _ 39 advmod _ _ 39 hungry hungry ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 37 xcomp _ Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=37:obj 40 . . PUNCT . _ 4 punct _ _ ``` ## Pragmatics {#pragmatics} No stored speech act for this sentence. | # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | **starve** *in a quote* | infinitive | | | | | | | tree rules | | 2 | **come** | present | | steorfan | | Old English | | like German sterben | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme from english=Initial\_Location | | 3 | **die** | to-infinitive | | | | | | | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute | | 4 | **narrow** | past | sterben | | | | | | tree rules | | 5 | **die** | to-infinitive | sterben *not said here* | | | | | of hunger | vn die-42.4-1 «NP V PP.cause»: agent=Patient of hunger=Causer | | 6 | **starve** *in a quote* | present · progressive | I | | | | today | | tree rules | | 7 | **mean** | present | starving | | | | | hungry, usually *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent | 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. **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:038-words-that-changed-their-meaning.lesson:11`. **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): R3-conj-first ×1, R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×3, R7-rel-agree ×2. **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/). - ← previous: [Words that changed their meaning, 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/38-words-that-changed-their-meaning/10/) - next →: [Words that changed their meaning, 12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/38-words-that-changed-their-meaning/12/) - ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/38-words-that-changed-their-meaning/)