--- title: In Middle English "girl" meant any young child, boy or girl; later i… — Words that changed their meaning · tree and pragmatics description: In Middle English "girl" meant any young child, boy or girl; later it narrowed to mean only a female child; narrowing is when a word comes to mean something more specific. Who acts: English girl, child, word. A sentence of the lesson «Words that changed their meaning» of the language course of Mova' --- [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/7/) [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/) / 7 # Words that changed their meaning, sentence 7 In Middle English "girl" meant any young child, boy or girl; later it narrowed to mean only a female child; narrowing is when a word comes to mean something more specific. **Who acts:** English girl, child, word · **What happens:** mean, narrow, be, come · **To what, where:** young child, female child, something 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 (English girl, child, word), 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:7 # text = In Middle English "girl" meant any young child, boy or girl; later it narrowed to mean only a female child; narrowing is when a word comes to mean something more specific. # 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): R1-cc-next ×1, R7-rel-agree ×2 1 In in ADP IN _ 5 case _ _ 2 Middle Middle PROPN NNP _ 3 compound _ _ 3 English English PROPN NNP Number=Sing 5 compound _ _ 4 " " PUNCT `` _ 5 punct _ _ 5 girl girl NOUN NN Number=Sing 7 nsubj _ Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=7:obl 6 " " PUNCT '' _ 5 punct _ _ 7 meant mean VERB VBD Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin 0 root _ _ 8 any any DET DT PronType=Ind 10 det _ _ 9 young young ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 10 amod _ _ 10 child child NOUN NN Number=Sing 7 obj _ _ 11 , , PUNCT , _ 12 punct _ _ 12 boy boy NOUN NN Number=Sing 10 appos _ _ 13 or or CCONJ CC _ 14 cc _ Agree=R1-cc-next|Haiku=12:cc 14 girl girl NOUN NN Number=Sing 12 conj _ _ 15 ; ; PUNCT , _ 18 punct _ _ 16 later late ADV RBR Degree=Cmp 18 advmod _ _ 17 it it PRON PRP Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs 18 nsubj _ _ 18 narrowed narrow VERB VBD Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin 7 parataxis _ Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=7:conj 19 to to PART TO _ 20 mark _ _ 20 mean mean VERB VB VerbForm=Inf 18 xcomp _ _ 21 only only ADV RB _ 24 advmod _ _ 22 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 24 det _ _ 23 female female ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 24 amod _ _ 24 child child NOUN NN Number=Sing 20 obj _ _ 25 ; ; PUNCT , _ 26 punct _ _ 26 narrowing narrow VERB VBG Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part 7 parataxis _ _ 27 is be AUX VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 26 cop _ _ 28 when when ADV WRB PronType=Int 31 advmod _ _ 29 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 30 det _ _ 30 word word NOUN NN Number=Sing 31 nsubj _ _ 31 comes come VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 26 advcl _ _ 32 to to PART TO _ 33 mark _ _ 33 mean mean VERB VB VerbForm=Inf 31 xcomp _ _ 34 something something PRON NN Number=Sing|PronType=Ind 33 obj _ _ 35 more more ADV RBR Degree=Cmp 36 advmod _ _ 36 specific specific ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 34 amod _ _ 37 . . PUNCT . _ 7 punct _ _ ``` ## Pragmatics {#pragmatics} No stored speech act for this sentence. | # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | **mean** | past | English girl | any young child | | | | | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Topic | | 2 | **narrow** | past | child | | | | | late *property* | tree rules | | 3 | **mean** | to-infinitive | child *not said here* | a female child | | | | | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Topic | | 4 | **is** | present | | | | | | narrow *property* | tree rules | | 5 | **come** | present | a word | | | | | | tree rules | | 6 | **mean** | to-infinitive | a word *not said here* | something | | | | | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent something=Topic | 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:7`. **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): R1-cc-next ×1, 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, 6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/38-words-that-changed-their-meaning/6/) - next →: [Words that changed their meaning, 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/38-words-that-changed-their-meaning/8/) - ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/38-words-that-changed-their-meaning/)