---
title: Before the telegraph, a long message could travel only as fast as a… — Communication: letters, phones, radio and the in… · tree and pragmatics
description: Before the telegraph, a long message could travel only as fast as a person, horse or ship could carry it. Who acts: long message, person. A sentence of the lesson «Communication: letters, phones, radio and the internet» of the world course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pr
---

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# Communication: letters, phones, radio and the internet, sentence 11

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Before the telegraph, a long message could travel only as fast as a person, horse or ship could carry it.

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**Who acts:** long message, person · **What happens:** travel, carry · **To what, where:** telegraph, message

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Communication: letters, phones, radio and the internet» of the world 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 (long message, person), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:world:100-communication-letters-to-internet.lesson:11
# text = Before the telegraph, a long message could travel only as fast as a person, horse or ship could carry it.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = world
# lesson = 100-communication-letters-to-internet.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 ×3
1	Before	before	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	telegraph	telegraph	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	message	message	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
8	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	travel	travel	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
10	only	only	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
11	as	as	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	fast	fast	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	9	advmod	_	_
13	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	21	mark	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=15:case|HaikuPos=ADP:IN:_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nsubj	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=12:obl
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
17	horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	conj	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=21:nsubj
18	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
19	ship	ship	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	conj	_	_
20	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	21	aux	_	_
21	carry	carry	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	_
22	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	obj	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	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 | **travel** | could | a long message |  |  | the telegraph |  | fast *property* | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme before telegraph=Trajectory |
| 2 | **carry** | could | a person and horse or ship | message |  |  |  |  | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=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:world:100-communication-letters-to-internet.lesson:11`.

**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 ×3. **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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