How real cats hunt: stalking, waiting and pouncing, sentence 11
Whiskers are thick, deep-rooted hairs full of nerves; cats cannot focus well very close to their noses, so the whiskers sweep forward to feel the prey for the last few centimetres, and cats also have stiff whiskers on the backs of their front legs.
Who acts: Whiskers, cats · What happens: be, root, not focus, sweep, feel, have · To what, where: prey, stiff whiskers, backs
This is a sentence of the lesson «How real cats hunt: stalking, waiting and pouncing» 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 (Whiskers, cats), 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 | Whiskers | whisker | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 thick | nsubj |
| 2 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 3 thick | cop |
| 3 | thick | thick | ADJ | Degree=Pos | root | root |
| 4 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 8 hairs | punct |
| 5 | deep | deep | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 8 hairs | amod |
| 6 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 5 deep | punct |
| 7 | rooted | root | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 8 hairs | amod |
| 8 | hairs | hair | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 thick | parataxis |
| 9 | full | full | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 8 hairs | amod |
| 10 | of | of | ADP | _ | 11 nerves | case |
| 11 | nerves | nerve | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 full | obl |
| 12 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 16 focus | punct |
| 13 | cats | cat | NOUN | Number=Plur | 16 focus | nsubj |
| 14 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 16 focus | aux |
| 15 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 16 focus | advmod |
| 16 | focus | focus | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 thick | conj |
| 17 | well | well | ADV | Degree=Pos | 16 focus | advmod |
| 18 | very | very | ADV | _ | 19 close | advmod |
| 19 | close | close | ADV | Degree=Pos | 16 focus | advmod |
| 20 | to | to | ADP | _ | 22 noses | case |
| 21 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 22 noses | nmod:poss |
| 22 | noses | nose | NOUN | Number=Plur | 19 close | obl |
| 23 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 27 sweep | punct |
| 24 | so | so | ADV | _ | 27 sweep | advmod |
| 25 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 26 whiskers | det |
| 26 | whiskers | whisker | NOUN | Number=Plur | 27 sweep | nsubj |
| 27 | sweep | sweep | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 16 focus | parataxis |
| 28 | forward | forward | ADV | _ | 27 sweep | advmod |
| 29 | to | to | PART | _ | 30 feel | mark |
| 30 | feel | feel | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 27 sweep | advcl |
| 31 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 32 prey | det |
| 32 | prey | prey | NOUN | Number=Sing | 30 feel | obj |
| 33 | for | for | ADP | _ | 37 centimetres | case |
| 34 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 37 centimetres | det |
| 35 | last | last | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 37 centimetres | amod |
| 36 | few | few | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 37 centimetres | amod |
| 37 | centimetres | centimetre | NOUN | Number=Plur | 30 feel | obl |
| 38 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 42 have | punct |
| 39 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 42 have | cc |
| 40 | cats | cat | NOUN | Number=Plur | 42 have | nsubj |
| 41 | also | also | ADV | _ | 42 have | advmod |
| 42 | have | have | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 30 feel | parataxis |
| 43 | stiff | stiff | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 44 whiskers | amod |
| 44 | whiskers | whisker | NOUN | Number=Plur | 42 have | obj |
| 45 | on | on | ADP | _ | 47 backs | case |
| 46 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 47 backs | det |
| 47 | backs | back | NOUN | Number=Plur | 42 have | obl |
| 48 | of | of | ADP | _ | 51 legs | case |
| 49 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 51 legs | nmod:poss |
| 50 | front | front | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 51 legs | amod |
| 51 | legs | leg | NOUN | Number=Plur | 47 backs | nmod |
| 52 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 thick | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is | present | Whiskers | thick property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | root | participle | vn other_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient | ||||||
| 3 | not focus | can | cats | close, well property | vn focus-87.1 «NP V PP.topic»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 4 | sweep | present | the whiskers | forward property | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 5 | feel | to-infinitive | the whiskers not said here | the prey | for the last few centimetres | vn hunt-35.1 «NP V NP PP.theme»: agent=Agent prey=Location for centimetre=Theme | |||
| 6 | have | present | cats | stiff whiskers | the backs of whiskers's front legs | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent whisker=Patient |
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:119-how-real-cats-hunt.lesson:11.
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 ×3, R7-rel-agree ×2. 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/119-how-real-cats-hunt/11/