---
title: Tense is the form of a verb that shows time; the past tense is for t… — Tenses: past, present and future · tree and pragmatics
description: Tense is the form of a verb that shows time; the past tense is for things that already happened. Who acts: Tense, verb, past tense, things. A sentence of the lesson «Tenses: past, present and future» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every
---

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# Tenses: past, present and future, sentence 5

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Tense is the form of a verb that shows time; the past tense is for things that already happened.

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**Who acts:** Tense, verb, past tense, things · **What happens:** be, show, happen · **To what, where:** form

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Tenses: past, present and future» 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 (Tense, verb, past tense, things), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:008-tenses-past-present-future.lesson:5
# text = Tense is the form of a verb that shows time; the past tense is for things that already happened.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 008-tenses-past-present-future.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 ×2
1	Tense	tense	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	form	form	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	verb	verb	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	_
8	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	9	nsubj	_	_
9	shows	show	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	acl:relcl	_	_
10	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=9:obl:unmarked
11	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	past	past	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	tense	tense	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
15	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
16	for	for	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:conj
18	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	20	nsubj	_	_
19	already	already	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	happened	happen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	acl:relcl	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | Tense | the form |  |  |  | of a verb | tree rules |
| 2 | **show** | present | a verb |  |  |  | time |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** | present | the past tense |  |  |  |  | for things | tree rules |
| 4 | **happen** | past | things |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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:008-tenses-past-present-future.lesson:5`.

**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 ×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/).

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