---
title: The Moon is moving away from Earth by about 3.8 centimetres a year,… — Distances and light years · tree and pragmatics
description: The Moon is moving away from Earth by about 3.8 centimetres a year, about as fast as fingernails grow. Who acts: Moon, fingernails. 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 clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/22-distances-and-light-years/15/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[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/) / [Space](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/) / [Distances and light years](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/22-distances-and-light-years/) / 15

# Distances and light years, sentence 15

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The Moon is moving away from Earth by about 3.8 centimetres a year, about as fast as fingernails grow.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Moon, fingernails · **What happens:** move away, grow · **To what, where:** Earth

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (Moon, fingernails), 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:15
# text = The Moon is moving away from Earth by about 3.8 centimetres a year, about as fast as fingernails grow.
# 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): R7-rel-agree ×1
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Moon	moon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	moving	move	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	away	away	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
6	from	from	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	Earth	Earth	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
8	by	by	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	about	about	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	3.8	3.8	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	11	nummod	_	_
11	centimetres	centimetre	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod:unmarked	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
15	about	about	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
16	as	as	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
17	fast	fast	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	4	advmod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:parataxis|HaikuPos=ADJ:JJ:Degree=Pos
18	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	20	mark	_	_
19	fingernails	fingernail	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nsubj	_	_
20	grow	grow	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	advcl	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **move away** | present · progressive | the Moon |  |  | Earth |  | by 3.8 centimetres  a year; away, fast *property* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V PP.source PP.trajectory PP.destination»: agent=Theme from earth=Source by centimetre=Trajectory |
| 2 | **grow** | present | fingernails |  |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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: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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Distances and light years, 14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/22-distances-and-light-years/14/)
- next →: [The Milky Way, 0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/23-the-milky-way/0/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/22-distances-and-light-years/)