Shrek's dragon: real «dragons» and lizards, and why nothing breathes fire, sentence 13

Many lizards drop their tails when grabbed: the tail breaks at weak points and muscles close the blood vessels, so little blood is lost; the tail wriggles to keep the predator busy, and the new tail grows with a rod of cartilage instead of bone.

Who acts: Many lizards, tail, muscles, new tail · What happens: drop, grab, break, close, lose, wriggle · To what, where: tails, weak points, blood vessels, little blood, predator

This is a sentence of the lesson «Shrek's dragon: real «dragons» and lizards, and why nothing breathes fire» 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 (Many lizards, tail, muscles, new tail), 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	Many	many	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 lizards	amod
2	lizards	lizard	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 drop	nsubj
3	drop	drop	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	5 tails	nmod:poss
5	tails	tail	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 drop	obj
6	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	7 grabbed	advmod
7	grabbed	grab	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	3 drop	advcl
8	:	:	PUNCT	_	11 breaks	punct
9	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	11 breaks	det
10	tail	tail	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 breaks	nsubj
11	breaks	break	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	3 drop	parataxis
12	at	at	ADP	_	14 points	case
13	weak	weak	ADJ	Degree=Pos	14 points	amod
14	points	point	NOUN	Number=Plur	11 breaks	obl
15	and	and	CCONJ	_	17 close	cc
16	muscles	muscle	NOUN	Number=Plur	17 close	nsubj
17	close	close	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	11 breaks	conj
18	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	20 vessels	det
19	blood	blood	NOUN	Number=Sing	20 vessels	compound
20	vessels	vessel	NOUN	Number=Plur	17 close	obj
21	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 lost	punct
22	so	so	ADV	_	26 lost	advmod
23	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	24 blood	amod
24	blood	blood	NOUN	Number=Sing	26 lost	nsubj:pass
25	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	26 lost	aux:pass
26	lost	lose	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	3 drop	conj
27	;	;	PUNCT	_	26 lost	punct
28	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	29 tail	det
29	tail	tail	NOUN	Number=Sing	30 wriggles	nsubj
30	wriggles	wriggle	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	3 drop	conj
31	to	to	PART	_	32 keep	mark
32	keep	keep	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	30 wriggles	advcl
33	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	34 predator	det
34	predator	predator	NOUN	Number=Sing	32 keep	obj
35	busy	busy	ADJ	Degree=Pos	32 keep	xcomp
36	,	,	PUNCT	_	41 grows	punct
37	and	and	CCONJ	_	41 grows	cc
38	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	40 tail	det
39	new	new	ADJ	Degree=Pos	40 tail	amod
40	tail	tail	NOUN	Number=Sing	41 grows	nsubj
41	grows	grow	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	3 drop	conj
42	with	with	ADP	_	44 rod	case
43	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	44 rod	det
44	rod	rod	NOUN	Number=Sing	41 grows	obl
45	of	of	ADP	_	46 cartilage	case
46	cartilage	cartilage	NOUN	Number=Sing	44 rod	nmod
47	instead	instead	ADV	ExtPos=ADP	49 bone	case
48	of	of	ADP	_	47 instead	fixed
49	bone	bone	NOUN	Number=Sing	41 grows	obl
50	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 drop	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	drop	present	Many lizards	legs's tails			vn put_direction-9.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tail=Theme
2	grab	participle	Many lizards not said here				vn steal-10.5-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
3	break	present	tail		weak points		vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme at point=Location
4	close	present	muscles	the blood vessels			vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent vessel=Patient
5	lose	present · passive		little blood			vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Eventuality
6	wriggle	present	the tail				vn body_internal_motion-49.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
7	keep	to-infinitive	the tail not said here	the predator		busy property	vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent predator=Theme
8	grow	present	the new tail			with a rod of cartilage; instead bone	vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme

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:146-shrek-s-dragon-real-dragons-and-lizards.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): R5-strong ×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/146-shrek-s-dragon-real-dragons-and-lizards/13/