---
title: Oil floats on water because it is less dense than water: a cupful of… — Floating and sinking: the push of water · tree and pragmatics
description: Oil floats on water because it is less dense than water: a cupful of oil weighs less than a cupful of water. Who acts: Oil, water, cupful. A sentence of the lesson «Floating and sinking: the push of water» of the world course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of ev
---

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# Floating and sinking: the push of water, sentence 22

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Oil floats on water because it is less dense than water: a cupful of oil weighs less than a cupful of water.

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**Who acts:** Oil, water, cupful · **What happens:** float, be, weigh · **To what, where:** water

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Floating and sinking: the push of water» 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 (Oil, water, cupful), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:world:083-floating-and-sinking.lesson:22
# text = Oil floats on water because it is less dense than water: a cupful of oil weighs less than a cupful of water.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = world
# lesson = 083-floating-and-sinking.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	Oil	oil	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	floats	float	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	on	on	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
5	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
7	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
8	less	less	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	9	advmod	_	_
9	dense	dense	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	advcl	_	_
10	than	than	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
12	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	14	punct	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	cupful	cupful	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	oil	oil	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod	_	_
17	weighs	weigh	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
18	less	less	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	17	advmod	_	_
19	than	than	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	cupful	cupful	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	_
22	of	of	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
23	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nmod	_	_
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **float** | present | Oil |  |  | water |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on water=Trajectory |
| 2 | **is** | present | water |  |  |  |  | than water; dense, less *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **weigh** | present | a cupful of oil |  |  |  |  | than a cupful of water; less *property* | vn register-54.1-2-1 «NP V NP.value»: agent=Theme |

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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:083-floating-and-sinking.lesson:22`.

**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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- ← previous: [Floating and sinking: the push of water, 21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/83-floating-and-sinking/21/)
- next →: [Floating and sinking: the push of water, 23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/83-floating-and-sinking/23/)
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