---
title: Today a quartz crystal in a watch wiggles 32,768 times a second, and… — Pendulums, Greenwich and railway time, atomic cl… · tree and pragmatics
description: Today a quartz crystal in a watch wiggles 32,768 times a second, and atomic clocks count the "ticks" of caesium atoms so exactly they'd lose less than a second in millions of years. Who acts: quartz crystal, atomic clocks, ticks. A sentence of the lesson «Pendulums, Greenwich and railway time, atomi
---

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# Pendulums, Greenwich and railway time, atomic clocks and phones, sentence 8

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Today a quartz crystal in a watch wiggles 32,768 times a second, and atomic clocks count the "ticks" of caesium atoms so exactly they'd lose less than a second in millions of years.

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**Who acts:** quartz crystal, atomic clocks, ticks · **What happens:** wiggle, count, lose, tick · **To what, where:** ticks, millions, caesium atoms

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Pendulums, Greenwich and railway time, atomic clocks and phones» 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 (quartz crystal, atomic clocks, ticks), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:world:123-pendulums-greenwich-atomic-clocks.lesson:8
# text = Today a quartz crystal in a watch wiggles 32,768 times a second, and atomic clocks count the "ticks" of caesium atoms so exactly they'd lose less than a second in millions of years.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = world
# lesson = 123-pendulums-greenwich-atomic-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
1	Today	today	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl:unmarked	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	quartz	quartz	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	crystal	crystal	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	watch	watch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	_
8	wiggles	wiggle	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	32,768	32,768	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	10	nummod	_	_
10	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl:unmarked	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	second	second	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod:unmarked	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
15	atomic	atomic	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=16:compound
16	clocks	clock	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	nsubj	_	_
17	count	count	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
19	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	20	punct	_	_
20	ticks	tick	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	obj	_	_
21	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	20	punct	_	_
22	of	of	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
23	caesium	caesium	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	compound	_	_
24	atoms	atom	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nmod	_	_
25	so	so	ADV	RB	_	29	advmod	_	_
26	exactly	exactly	ADV	RB	_	29	advmod	_	_
27	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	29	nsubj	_	_
28	'd	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	29	aux	_	_
29	lose	lose	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	parataxis	_	_
30	less	less	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp|ExtPos=ADV	33	advmod	_	_
31	than	than	ADP	IN	_	33	case	_	_
32	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	33	det	_	_
33	second	second	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	29	obj	_	_
34	in	in	ADP	IN	_	35	case	_	_
35	millions	million	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	29	obl	_	_
36	of	of	ADP	IN	_	37	case	_	_
37	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	35	nmod	_	_
38	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wiggle** | present | a quartz crystal in a watch |  |  |  | time; today |  | vn body\_internal\_motion-49.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **count** | present | atomic clocks | the ticks of caesium atoms |  |  |  |  | vn multiply-108 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tick=Theme |
| 3 | **lose** | would | ticks *= tick* |  |  | millions of years | second | exactly *property* | vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V PP.eventuality S\_ING»: agent=Agent in million=Eventuality |
| 4 | **tick** *in a quote* |  |  | caesium atoms |  |  |  |  | nom tick «event transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .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:123-pendulums-greenwich-atomic-clocks.lesson:8`.

**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. **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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