The polar zone: arctic foxes, snowy owls, lemmings and reindeer, sentence 7
Lemmings are small tundra rodents whose numbers rise and fall hugely every few years; in crowded years they spread out and some drown crossing rivers, but they do not jump off cliffs on purpose.
Who acts: Lemmings, numbers, some · What happens: be, rise, fall, spread out, drown, crossing · To what, where: small tundra rodents, rivers, cliffs, purpose
This is a sentence of the lesson «The polar zone: arctic foxes, snowy owls, lemmings and reindeer» 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 (Lemmings, numbers, some), 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 | Lemmings | lemming | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 rodents | nsubj |
| 2 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 5 rodents | cop |
| 3 | small | small | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 5 rodents | amod |
| 4 | tundra | tundra | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 rodents | compound |
| 5 | rodents | rodent | NOUN | Number=Plur | root | root |
| 6 | whose | whose | PRON | Poss=Yes PronType=Rel | 7 numbers | nmod:poss |
| 7 | numbers | number | NOUN | Number=Plur | 8 rise | nsubj |
| 8 | rise | rise | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 5 rodents | acl:relcl |
| 9 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 10 fall | cc |
| 10 | fall | fall | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 8 rise | conj |
| 11 | hugely | hugely | ADV | _ | 10 fall | advmod |
| 12 | every | every | DET | PronType=Tot | 14 years | det |
| 13 | few | few | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 14 years | amod |
| 14 | years | year | NOUN | Number=Plur | 10 fall | obl:unmarked |
| 15 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 20 spread | punct |
| 16 | in | in | ADP | _ | 18 years | case |
| 17 | crowded | crowded | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 18 years | amod |
| 18 | years | year | NOUN | Number=Plur | 20 spread | obl |
| 19 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 20 spread | nsubj |
| 20 | spread | spread | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 8 rise | conj |
| 21 | out | out | ADV | _ | 20 spread | advmod |
| 22 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 24 drown | cc |
| 23 | some | some | DET | PronType=Ind | 24 drown | nsubj |
| 24 | drown | drown | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 20 spread | conj |
| 25 | crossing | crossing | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 24 drown | xcomp |
| 26 | rivers | river | NOUN | Number=Plur | 25 crossing | obj |
| 27 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 32 jump | punct |
| 28 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 32 jump | cc |
| 29 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 32 jump | nsubj |
| 30 | do | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 32 jump | aux |
| 31 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 32 jump | advmod |
| 32 | jump | jump | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 20 spread | conj |
| 33 | off | off | ADP | _ | 32 jump | compound:prt |
| 34 | cliffs | cliff | NOUN | Number=Plur | 32 jump | obj |
| 35 | on | on | ADP | _ | 36 purpose | case |
| 36 | purpose | purpose | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 jump | obl |
| 37 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 rodents | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | present | Lemmings | small tundra rodents | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | rise | present | numbers | vn assuming_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 3 | fall | present | numbers not said here | year | hugely property | vn occur-48.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||
| 4 | spread out | past | lemmings = lemming | year | out property | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||
| 5 | drown | present | some | tree rules | |||||
| 6 | crossing | gerund | some not said here | rivers | tree rules | ||||
| 7 | not jump off | present · do-support | lemmings = lemming | cliffs | purpose | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V NP PP.trajectory»: agent=Agent cliff=Theme on purpose=Trajectory |
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:106-the-polar-zone-arctic-foxes-snowy-owls-lemmings-reindeer.lesson:7.
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): R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×1, R8-pos-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/106-the-polar-zone-arctic-foxes-snowy-owls-lemmings-reindeer/7/