---
title: An object floats if it is less dense than water, and sinks if it is… — Materials and their properties · tree and pragmatics
description: An object floats if it is less dense than water, and sinks if it is denser. Who acts: object. A sentence of the lesson «Materials and their properties» of the world course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Materials and their properties, sentence 13

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
An object floats if it is less dense than water, and sinks if it is denser.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** object · **What happens:** float, be, sink

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Materials and their properties» 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 (object), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:world:018-materials-and-properties.lesson:13
# text = An object floats if it is less dense than water, and sinks if it is denser.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = world
# lesson = 018-materials-and-properties.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	object	object	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	floats	float	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
6	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
7	less	less	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	8	advmod	_	_
8	dense	dense	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	advcl	_	_
9	than	than	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	sinks	sink	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
14	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
16	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
17	denser	dense	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	13	advcl	_	_
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- 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 | **float** | present | a object |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | object |  |  |  |  | than water; dense, less *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **sink** | present | a object *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
| 4 | **is** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | object |  |  |  |  | dense *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:018-materials-and-properties.lesson:13`.

**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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