---
title: Squash a ball of modelling clay and it sinks in a bowl of water; pre… — Ships, ports and submarines · tree and pragmatics
description: Squash a ball of modelling clay and it sinks in a bowl of water; press the same clay into a little boat and it floats. Who acts: you, ball, water. A sentence of the lesson «Ships, ports and submarines» of the technology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of e
---

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# Ships, ports and submarines, sentence 4

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Squash a ball of modelling clay and it sinks in a bowl of water; press the same clay into a little boat and it floats.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you, ball, water · **What happens:** squash, sink, press, float · **To what, where:** ball, bowl, same clay, little boat

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Ships, ports and submarines» of the technology 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 (you, ball, water), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:technology:024-ships-ports-and-submarines.lesson:4
# text = Squash a ball of modelling clay and it sinks in a bowl of water; press the same clay into a little boat and it floats.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = technology
# lesson = 024-ships-ports-and-submarines.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): R3-conj-first ×1
1	Squash	squash	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	ball	ball	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	modelling	modelling	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	_
6	clay	clay	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	sinks	sink	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	conj	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	bowl	bowl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	_
15	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	16	punct	_	_
16	press	press	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	1	conj	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
18	same	same	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	clay	clay	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	_
20	into	into	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
21	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
22	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	23	amod	_	_
23	boat	boat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	_
24	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	26	cc	_	_
25	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	26	nsubj	_	_
26	floats	float	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	conj	_	Agree=R3-conj-first|Haiku=16:conj
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **squash** | imperative | you *not said here* | a ball of modelling clay |  |  |  |  | vn carve-21.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ball=Patient |
| 2 | **sink** | present | ball |  |  | a bowl of water |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **press** | infinitive | you *not said here* | the same clay |  | a little boat |  |  | vn push-12-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent clay=Theme |
| 4 | **float** | present | water |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «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.

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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:technology:024-ships-ports-and-submarines.lesson:4`.

**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): R3-conj-first ×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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- ← previous: [Ships, ports and submarines, 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/24-ships-ports-and-submarines/3/)
- next →: [Ships, ports and submarines, 6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/24-ships-ports-and-submarines/6/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/24-ships-ports-and-submarines/)