---
title: In 1838 Friedrich Bessel measured the parallax of the star 61 Cygni,… — How we know: measuring the sky · tree and pragmatics
description: In 1838 Friedrich Bessel measured the parallax of the star 61 Cygni, the first star distance ever measured. Who acts: Friedrich. A sentence of the lesson «How we know: measuring the sky» of the space course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# How we know: measuring the sky, sentence 8

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In 1838 Friedrich Bessel measured the parallax of the star 61 Cygni, the first star distance ever measured.

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**Who acts:** Friedrich · **What happens:** measure · **To what, where:** parallax, 1838, first star distance

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This is a sentence of the lesson «How we know: measuring the sky» 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 (Friedrich), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:space:028-how-we-know-measuring-the-sky.lesson:8
# text = In 1838 Friedrich Bessel measured the parallax of the star 61 Cygni, the first star distance ever measured.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = space
# lesson = 028-how-we-know-measuring-the-sky.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): R5-strong ×1, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	1838	1838	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	5	obl	_	_
3	Friedrich	Friedrich	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	Bessel	Bessel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	flat	_	_
5	measured	measure	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	parallax	parallax	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	star	star	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	_
11	61	61	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	10	flat	_	_
12	Cygni	Cygni	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	flat	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
15	first	first	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	17	amod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=16:amod
16	star	star	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	compound	_	_
17	distance	distance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	appos	_	_
18	ever	ever	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	19	advmod	_	_
19	measured	measure	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	17	acl	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=17:acl|HaikuPos=VERB:VBD:Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- 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 | **measure** | past | Friedrich | the parallax of the star |  | 1838 |  |  | vn register-54.1-2-1 «NP V NP.value»: agent=Theme parallax=Value |
| 2 | **measure** | participle |  | the first star distance *not said here* |  |  | ever |  | vn register-54.1-2-1 «NP V NP.value»: 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:028-how-we-know-measuring-the-sky.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): R5-strong ×1, R8-pos-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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