---
title: A sheet of paper laid flat on top of a book falls with the book, bec… — Why things fall: the apple and the pull of the E… · tree and pragmatics
description: A sheet of paper laid flat on top of a book falls with the book, because the book shields it from the air. Who acts: sheet, book. A sentence of the lesson «Why things fall: the apple and the pull of the Earth» of the physics course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics
---

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# Why things fall: the apple and the pull of the Earth, sentence 15

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A sheet of paper laid flat on top of a book falls with the book, because the book shields it from the air.

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**Who acts:** sheet, book · **What happens:** lay, fall, shield · **To what, where:** sheet, top, air

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Why things fall: the apple and the pull of the Earth» of the physics 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 (sheet, book), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:physics:001-why-things-fall.lesson:15
# text = A sheet of paper laid flat on top of a book falls with the book, because the book shields it from the air.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = physics
# lesson = 001-why-things-fall.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	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	sheet	sheet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	paper	paper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
5	laid	lay	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	2	acl	_	_
6	flat	flat	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
7	on	on	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	top	top	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	book	book	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	_
12	falls	fall	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	book	book	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
17	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	20	mark	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	book	book	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nsubj	_	_
20	shields	shield	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=12:conj
21	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	obj	_	_
22	from	from	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
23	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	24	det	_	_
24	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obl	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	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 | **lay** | participle |  | a sheet of paper *not said here* |  | top of a book |  | flat *property* | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent on top=Destination |
| 2 | **fall** | present | a sheet of paper |  |  |  |  | with the book | vn occur-48.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **shield** | present | the book | sheet |  | the air |  |  | 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:physics:001-why-things-fall.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): 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/).

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