---
title: A light year sounds like a time, but it is a distance: how far light… — Distances and light years · tree and pragmatics
description: A light year sounds like a time, but it is a distance: how far light goes in one year, about 9.5 trillion kilometres. Who acts: light year, light. A sentence of the lesson «Distances and light years» of the space course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every cl
---

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# Distances and light years, sentence 1

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A light year sounds like a time, but it is a distance: how far light goes in one year, about 9.5 trillion kilometres.

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**Who acts:** light year, light · **What happens:** sound, be, go · **To what, where:** distance, trillion kilometres

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Distances and light years» of the space 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 (light year, light), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:space:022-distances-and-light-years.lesson:1
# text = A light year sounds like a time, but it is a distance: how far light goes in one year, about 9.5 trillion kilometres.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = space
# lesson = 022-distances-and-light-years.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	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	light	light	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	sounds	sound	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	like	like	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	distance	distance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	_
14	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	18	punct	_	_
15	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	16	advmod	_	_
16	far	far	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	18	advmod	_	_
17	light	light	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
18	goes	go	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
19	in	in	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	21	nummod	_	_
21	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	_
22	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	26	punct	_	_
23	about	about	ADV	RB	_	25	advmod	_	_
24	9.5	9.5	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Frac	25	compound	_	_
25	trillion	trillion	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	26	nummod	_	_
26	kilometres	kilometre	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	obl:unmarked	_	_
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	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 | **sound** | present | a light year |  |  |  | time |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **is a** | present | light | a distance |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **go** | present | light | trillion kilometres |  |  | year | far *property* | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «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:space:022-distances-and-light-years.lesson:1`.

**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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