---
title: A sundial tells the time by the shadow of a stick called a gnomon, w… — Day and night, shadows and sundials · tree and pragmatics
description: A sundial tells the time by the shadow of a stick called a gnomon, which moves round as the Earth turns. Who acts: sundial, stick, Earth. A sentence of the lesson «Day and night, shadows and sundials» of the world course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every c
---

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# Day and night, shadows and sundials, sentence 13

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A sundial tells the time by the shadow of a stick called a gnomon, which moves round as the Earth turns.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** sundial, stick, Earth · **What happens:** tell, call, move, turn, shadow · **To what, where:** gnomon, stick · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Day and night, shadows and sundials» 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 (sundial, stick, Earth), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:world:118-day-night-shadows-sundials.lesson:13
# text = A sundial tells the time by the shadow of a stick called a gnomon, which moves round as the Earth turns.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = world
# lesson = 118-day-night-shadows-sundials.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 ×2
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	sundial	sundial	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	tells	tell	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	by	by	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	shadow	shadow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=5:nmod
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	stick	stick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	_
12	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	acl	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	gnomon	gnomon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	xcomp	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
16	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	17	nsubj	_	_
17	moves	move	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	acl:relcl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=14:acl:relcl
18	round	round	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
19	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	22	mark	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	Earth	Earth	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	22	nsubj	_	_
22	turns	turn	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	advcl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	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 | **tell** *speech: assert* | present | a sundial |  |  |  | time | by the shadow of a stick | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **call** | participle | a stick *not said here* | a gnomon |  |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **move** | present | a stick |  |  |  |  | round *property* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **turn** | present | the Earth |  |  |  |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **shadow** |  |  | a stick |  |  |  |  | nom shadow «state transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .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:118-day-night-shadows-sundials.lesson:13`.

**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 ×2. **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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