---
title: The ancient Egyptians used shadow clocks about 3,500 years ago, arou… — Clocks before clocks: sundials, water clocks, ca… · tree and pragmatics
description: The ancient Egyptians used shadow clocks about 3,500 years ago, around 1500 BC. Who acts: ancient Egyptians. A sentence of the lesson «Clocks before clocks: sundials, water clocks, candles and hourglasses» of the world course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of ev
---

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# Clocks before clocks: sundials, water clocks, candles and hourglasses, sentence 12

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The ancient Egyptians used shadow clocks about 3,500 years ago, around 1500 BC.

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**Who acts:** ancient Egyptians · **What happens:** use · **To what, where:** shadow clocks

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Clocks before clocks: sundials, water clocks, candles and hourglasses» 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 (ancient Egyptians), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:world:122-clocks-before-clocks.lesson:12
# text = The ancient Egyptians used shadow clocks about 3,500 years ago, around 1500 BC.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = world
# lesson = 122-clocks-before-clocks.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, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	ancient	ancient	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	Egyptians	egyptian	PROPN	NNPS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=6:nsubj
4	used	use	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	shadow	shadow	NOUN	NN	_	6	compound	_	_
6	clocks	clock	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
7	about	about	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	3,500	3500	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	9	nummod	_	_
9	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl:unmarked	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=4:obl:unmarked
10	ago	ago	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=9:advmod
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	around	around	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=13:case|HaikuPos=ADP:IN:_
13	1500	1500	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	4	obl	_	_
14	BC	BC	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	flat	_	_
15	.	.	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 | **use** | past | the ancient Egyptians | shadow clocks |  |  |  | 1500 *obl*; ago *property* | vn eat-39.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent clock=Patient |

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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:world:122-clocks-before-clocks.lesson:12`.

**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, R7-rel-agree ×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: [Clocks before clocks: sundials, water…, 11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/122-clocks-before-clocks/11/)
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