---
title: Around 240 BC Eratosthenes estimated the size of the Earth by compar… — Olympiad: stars, light and space history ★★★ · tree and pragmatics
description: Around 240 BC Eratosthenes estimated the size of the Earth by comparing the Sun's shadows at two cities in Egypt. Who acts: Eratosthenes, Sun. A sentence of the lesson «Olympiad: stars, light and space history ★★★» of the space course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmat
---

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# Olympiad: stars, light and space history ★★★, sentence 17

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Around 240 BC Eratosthenes estimated the size of the Earth by comparing the Sun's shadows at two cities in Egypt.

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**Who acts:** Eratosthenes, Sun · **What happens:** estimate, compare, shadow · **To what, where:** 240, shadows, two cities

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Olympiad: stars, light and space history ★★★» 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 (Eratosthenes, Sun), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:space:032-olympiad-stars-light-and-space-history.lesson:17
# text = Around 240 BC Eratosthenes estimated the size of the Earth by comparing the Sun's shadows at two cities in Egypt.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = space
# lesson = 032-olympiad-stars-light-and-space-history.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	Around	around	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
2	240	240	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	5	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	BC	BC	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	flat	_	_
4	Eratosthenes	Eratosthenes	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	estimated	estimate	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	size	size	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	Earth	Earth	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	_
11	by	by	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
12	comparing	compare	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	advcl	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	Sun	Sun	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	nmod:poss	_	_
15	's	's	PART	POS	_	14	case	_	_
16	shadows	shadow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obj	_	_
17	at	at	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	19	nummod	_	_
19	cities	city	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obl	_	_
20	in	in	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	Egypt	Egypt	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	19	nmod	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **estimate** | past | Eratosthenes | 240 |  |  |  |  | vn estimate-34.2-1 «NP V NP.value»: agent=Agent size=Value |
| 2 | **compare** | gerund | Eratosthenes *not said here* | the Sun's shadows |  | two cities in Egypt |  |  | vn amalgamate-22.2-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent shadow=Patient |
| 3 | **shadow** |  | the Sun |  |  |  |  |  | nom shadow «state transitive»: poss=agent |

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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:032-olympiad-stars-light-and-space-history.lesson:17`.

**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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