---
title: An hourglass is a timer you can watch: sand falls through a narrow n… — Clocks before clocks: sundials, water clocks, ca… · tree and pragmatics
description: An hourglass is a timer you can watch: sand falls through a narrow neck. Who acts: hourglass, you, sand. 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 every 
---

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# Clocks before clocks: sundials, water clocks, candles and hourglasses, sentence 7

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An hourglass is a timer you can watch: sand falls through a narrow neck.

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**Who acts:** hourglass, you, sand · **What happens:** be, watch, fall · **To what, where:** timer, 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 (hourglass, you, sand), 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:7
# text = An hourglass is a timer you can watch: sand falls through a narrow neck.
# 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): no change
1	An	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	hourglass	hourglass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	timer	timer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	watch	watch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	acl:relcl	_	_
9	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	_
10	sand	sand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
11	falls	fall	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	parataxis	_	_
12	through	through	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	narrow	narrow	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	neck	neck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed voice=narrator

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | a hourglass | a timer |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **watch** | can | you | a timer *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent timer=Theme |
| 3 | **fall** | present | sand |  |  | a narrow neck |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme through neck=Location |

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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:7`.

**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): no change. **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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