---
title: An hourglass times with sand falling through a narrow neck; hourglas… — Clocks before clocks: sundials, water clocks, ca… · tree and pragmatics
description: An hourglass times with sand falling through a narrow neck; hourglasses became common in Europe about 700 years ago. Who acts: sand, hourglasses. 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 dep
---

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# Clocks before clocks: sundials, water clocks, candles and hourglasses, sentence 18

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An hourglass times with sand falling through a narrow neck; hourglasses became common in Europe about 700 years ago.

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**Who acts:** sand, hourglasses · **What happens:** fall, become · **To what, where:** narrow neck

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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 (sand, hourglasses), 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:18
# text = An hourglass times with sand falling through a narrow neck; hourglasses became common in Europe about 700 years ago.
# 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): R7-rel-agree ×1, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	An	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	hourglass	hourglass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=3:nsubj
3	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=0:root|HaikuPos=VERB:VBZ:Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin
4	with	with	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	sand	sand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
6	falling	fall	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	5	acl	_	_
7	through	through	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	narrow	narrow	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	neck	neck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
11	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	hourglasses	hourglass	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	_
13	became	become	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
14	common	common	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	xcomp	_	_
15	in	in	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	Europe	Europe	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
17	about	about	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	700	700	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	19	nummod	_	_
19	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obl:unmarked	_	_
20	ago	ago	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	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 | **fall** | gerund | sand *not said here* |  |  | a narrow neck |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme through neck=Location |
| 2 | **become** | past | hourglasses |  |  |  |  | ago, common *property* | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=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:18`.

**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): R7-rel-agree ×1, R8-pos-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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