---
title: Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1876, which means he… — Communication: letters, phones, radio and the in… · tree and pragmatics
description: Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1876, which means he was given the official right to it as his invention. Who acts: Alexander Bell, Bell. A sentence of the lesson «Communication: letters, phones, radio and the internet» of the world course of Mova's primary school with its dependency
---

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# Communication: letters, phones, radio and the internet, sentence 17

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Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1876, which means he was given the official right to it as his invention.

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**Who acts:** Alexander Bell, Bell · **What happens:** patent, mean, give, invent · **To what, where:** telephone, 1876, Bell · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Alexander Bell, Bell), 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:17
# text = Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1876, which means he was given the official right to it as his invention.
# 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): no change
1	Alexander	Alexander	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
2	Graham	Graham	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	1	flat	_	_
3	Bell	Bell	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	patented	patent	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	telephone	telephone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	1876	1876	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	4	obl	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	11	nsubj	_	_
11	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj:pass	_	_
13	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux:pass	_	_
14	given	give	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	ccomp	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
16	official	official	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	right	right	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	_
18	to	to	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nmod	_	_
20	as	as	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	22	nmod:poss	_	_
22	invention	invention	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **patent** | past | Alexander Bell | the telephone |  | 1876 |  |  | vn patent-101 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent telephone=Theme |
| 2 | **mean** | present |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **give** | past · passive |  | Bell |  |  |  | as Bell's invention | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: subject=Recipient right=Theme |
| 4 | **invent** |  | Bell |  |  |  |  |  | nom invention «cognition transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .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: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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