---
title: God told Abraham to look at the stars and try to count them: his des… — Abraham, Isaac and Jacob · tree and pragmatics
description: God told Abraham to look at the stars and try to count them: his descendants would be as many. Who acts: God, descendants. A sentence of the lesson «Abraham, Isaac and Jacob» of the religion ethics course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, sentence 8

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
God told Abraham to look at the stars and try to count them: his descendants would be as many.

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**Who acts:** God, descendants · **What happens:** tell, look, try, count, be · **To what, where:** Abraham, stars · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Abraham, Isaac and Jacob» of the religion ethics 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 (God, descendants), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:religion-ethics:004-abraham-isaac-and-jacob.lesson:8
# text = God told Abraham to look at the stars and try to count them: his descendants would be as many.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = religion-ethics
# lesson = 004-abraham-isaac-and-jacob.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	God	God	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	Abraham	Abraham	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	iobj	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	look	look	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
6	at	at	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	stars	star	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	try	try	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	count	count	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	xcomp	_	_
13	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	_
14	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	2	punct	_	_
15	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	descendants	descendant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nsubj	_	_
17	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
18	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	cop	_	_
19	as	as	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	parataxis	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | God |  | Abraham |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent abraham=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **look** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | God *not said here* |  |  |  |  | at the stars | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at star=Theme |
| 3 | **try** | infinitive | God *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 4 | **count** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | God *not said here* | stars *= star* |  |  |  |  | vn multiply-108 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme |
| 5 | **is** | would | Abraham's descendants |  |  |  |  | many *property* | 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:religion-ethics:004-abraham-isaac-and-jacob.lesson:8`.

**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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