---
title: In China and Japan, incense clocks burned slowly; balls tied on thre… — Clocks before clocks: sundials, water clocks, ca… · tree and pragmatics
description: In China and Japan, incense clocks burned slowly; balls tied on threads dropped onto a plate at set times, like an alarm. Who acts: incense clocks. 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 d
---

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# Clocks before clocks: sundials, water clocks, candles and hourglasses, sentence 17

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
In China and Japan, incense clocks burned slowly; balls tied on threads dropped onto a plate at set times, like an alarm.

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**Who acts:** incense clocks · **What happens:** burn, tie, drop · **To what, where:** China, balls, threads, plate

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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 (incense clocks), 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:17
# text = In China and Japan, incense clocks burned slowly; balls tied on threads dropped onto a plate at set times, like an alarm.
# 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 ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	China	China	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
4	Japan	Japan	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	incense	incense	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	_
7	clocks	clock	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
8	burned	burn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
10	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	_
11	balls	ball	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	conj	_	_
12	tied	tie	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	acl	_	_
13	on	on	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	threads	thread	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obl	_	_
15	dropped	drop	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	14	acl	_	_
16	onto	onto	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	plate	plate	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	_
19	at	at	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	set	set	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=21:compound|HaikuPos=NOUN:NN:Number=Sing
21	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obl	_	_
22	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	25	punct	_	_
23	like	like	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
24	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	25	det	_	_
25	alarm	alarm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=7:conj
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **burn** | past | incense clocks and balls |  |  | China and Japan |  | slowly *property* | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in china=Location |
| 2 | **tie** | participle |  | balls *not said here* |  |  |  | on threads | vn tape-22.4 «NP V ADV-Middle PP»: agent=Patient on thread=Co-Patient |
| 3 | **drop** | participle |  | threads *not said here* |  | a plate | time | like a alarm | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V PP.trajectory»: agent=Theme onto plate=Trajectory |

<!-- .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:122-clocks-before-clocks.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): R5-strong ×1, 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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