---
title: In China, incense sticks burned slowly, and little balls on threads… — Clocks before clocks: sundials, water clocks, ca… · tree and pragmatics
description: In China, incense sticks burned slowly, and little balls on threads dropped onto a plate with a clang: an alarm with no electricity. Who acts: incense sticks, little balls. A sentence of the lesson «Clocks before clocks: sundials, water clocks, candles and hourglasses» of the world course of Mova's 
---

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# Clocks before clocks: sundials, water clocks, candles and hourglasses, sentence 6

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
In China, incense sticks burned slowly, and little balls on threads dropped onto a plate with a clang: an alarm with no electricity.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** incense sticks, little balls · **What happens:** burn, drop · **To what, where:** alarm, China, 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 sticks, little balls), 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:6
# text = In China, incense sticks burned slowly, and little balls on threads dropped onto a plate with a clang: an alarm with no electricity.
# 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, R6-punct-agree ×1
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	China	China	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	incense	incense	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	compound	_	_
5	sticks	stick	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
6	burned	burn	VERB	VBD	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=11:punct
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
10	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	balls	ball	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nsubj	_	_
12	on	on	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	threads	thread	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nmod	_	_
14	dropped	drop	VERB	VBD	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
15	onto	onto	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	plate	plate	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
18	with	with	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	clang	clang	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=17:nmod
21	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	23	punct	_	_
22	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	alarm	alarm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
24	with	with	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
25	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	26	det	_	_
26	electricity	electricity	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	nmod	_	_
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	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 sticks | a alarm with no electricity |  | China |  | slowly *property* | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in china=Location |
| 2 | **drop** | past | little balls on threads |  |  | a plate |  | with a clang | 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:6`.

**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, R6-punct-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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