The African savanna area: giraffes, zebras, rhinos and antelopes, sentence 8

Zebra skin is dark under the hair, so scientists usually describe a zebra as black with white stripes, and every zebra has its own stripe pattern, which helps a foal know its mother.

Who acts: Zebra skin, scientists, zebra, own stripe pattern, foal, skin · What happens: be, describe, have, help, know, pattern · To what, where: hair, zebra, own stripe pattern, mother

This is a sentence of the lesson «The African savanna area: giraffes, zebras, rhinos and antelopes» of the biology 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 (Zebra skin, scientists, zebra, own stripe pattern), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

The tree

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Zebra	zebra	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 skin	compound
2	skin	skin	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 dark	nsubj
3	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 dark	cop
4	dark	dark	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root
5	under	under	ADP	_	7 hair	case
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 hair	det
7	hair	hair	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 dark	obl
8	,	,	PUNCT	_	12 describe	punct
9	so	so	ADV	_	12 describe	advmod
10	scientists	scientist	NOUN	Number=Plur	12 describe	nsubj
11	usually	usually	ADV	_	12 describe	advmod
12	describe	describe	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 dark	parataxis
13	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	14 zebra	det
14	zebra	zebra	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 describe	obj
15	as	as	ADP	_	16 black	case
16	black	black	ADJ	Degree=Pos	12 describe	obl
17	with	with	ADP	_	19 stripes	case
18	white	white	ADJ	Degree=Pos	19 stripes	amod
19	stripes	stripe	NOUN	Number=Plur	16 black	obl
20	,	,	PUNCT	_	24 has	punct
21	and	and	CCONJ	_	24 has	cc
22	every	every	DET	PronType=Tot	23 zebra	det
23	zebra	zebra	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 has	nsubj
24	has	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 dark	conj
25	its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	28 pattern	nmod:poss
26	own	own	ADJ	Degree=Pos	28 pattern	amod
27	stripe	stripe	NOUN	Number=Sing	28 pattern	compound
28	pattern	pattern	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 has	obj
29	,	,	PUNCT	_	31 helps	punct
30	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	31 helps	nsubj
31	helps	help	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	28 pattern	acl:relcl
32	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	33 foal	det
33	foal	foal	NOUN	Number=Sing	34 know	nsubj
34	know	know	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	31 helps	xcomp
35	its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	36 mother	nmod:poss
36	mother	mother	NOUN	Number=Sing	34 know	obj
37	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 dark	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	is	present	Zebra skin		the hair	dark property	tree rules
2	describe	present	scientists	a zebra		as black; usually property	vn characterize-29.2-1-1 «NP V NP S_ING»: agent=Agent zebra=Theme as black=Attribute
3	have	present	every zebra	skin's own stripe pattern			vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent pattern=Patient
4	help	present	skin's own stripe pattern				vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme
5	know	infinitive	a foal	skin's mother			vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer mother=Stimulus
6	pattern		skin				nom pattern «cognition intransitive»: poss=agent

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.

Licence: CC 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:biology:101-the-african-savanna-area-giraffes-zebras-rhinos.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.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/101-the-african-savanna-area-giraffes-zebras-rhinos/8/