---
title: Old buildings creak, and pipes knock when water moves through them;… — The rumour that grows · tree and pragmatics
description: Old buildings creak, and pipes knock when water moves through them; a boring explanation is more likely than a ghost. Who acts: Old buildings, pipes, water, boring explanation. A sentence of the lesson «The rumour that grows» of the world course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and 
---

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# The rumour that grows, sentence 24

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Old buildings creak, and pipes knock when water moves through them; a boring explanation is more likely than a ghost.

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**Who acts:** Old buildings, pipes, water, boring explanation · **What happens:** creak, knock, move, be

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This is a sentence of the lesson «The rumour that grows» 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 (Old buildings, pipes, water, boring explanation), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:world:167-the-rumour-that-grows.lesson:24
# text = Old buildings creak, and pipes knock when water moves through them; a boring explanation is more likely than a ghost.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = world
# lesson = 167-the-rumour-that-grows.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): R6-punct-agree ×1
1	Old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	buildings	building	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	creak	creak	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
6	pipes	pipe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	knock	knock	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	10	mark	_	_
9	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	moves	move	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	_
11	through	through	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obl	_	_
13	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	7	punct	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	boring	boring	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	explanation	explanation	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nsubj	_	_
17	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
18	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	19	advmod	_	_
19	likely	likely	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	parataxis	_	_
20	than	than	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	ghost	ghost	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=7: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 | **creak** | present | Old buildings |  |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **knock** | present | pipes |  |  |  |  |  | vn split-23.2 «NP V apart»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **move** | present | water |  |  |  |  | through pipes *= pipe* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V PP.trajectory»: agent=Theme through they=Trajectory |
| 4 | **is** | present | a boring explanation |  |  |  |  | than a ghost; likely *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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:167-the-rumour-that-grows.lesson:24`.

**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): 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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