Myth check: do lemmings jump off cliffs?, sentence 3

The truth is stranger: lemming numbers boom and crash every three to four years, and in boom years crowds of lemmings spread out looking for food, swim rivers and lakes, and some drown, not because they want to die but because they are moving on.

Who acts: truth, lemming numbers, crowds, some · What happens: be, boom, crash, spread out, look, swim · To what, where: rivers

This is a sentence of the lesson «Myth check: do lemmings jump off cliffs?» 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 (truth, lemming numbers, crowds, 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	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 truth	det
2	truth	truth	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 stranger	nsubj
3	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 stranger	cop
4	stranger	strange	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	root	root
5	:	:	PUNCT	_	8 boom	punct
6	lemming	lemming	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 numbers	compound
7	numbers	number	NOUN	Number=Plur	8 boom	nsubj
8	boom	boom	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 stranger	parataxis
9	and	and	CCONJ	_	10 crash	cc
10	crash	crash	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	8 boom	conj
11	every	every	DET	PronType=Tot	15 years	det
12	three	three	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	15 years	nummod
13	to	to	ADP	_	14 four	case
14	four	four	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	15 years	nummod
15	years	year	NOUN	Number=Plur	10 crash	obl:unmarked
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	24 spread	punct
17	and	and	CCONJ	_	21 crowds	cc
18	in	in	ADP	_	20 years	case
19	boom	boom	NOUN	Number=Sing	20 years	compound
20	years	year	NOUN	Number=Plur	24 spread	obl
21	crowds	crowd	NOUN	Number=Plur	24 spread	nsubj
22	of	of	ADP	_	23 lemmings	case
23	lemmings	lemming	NOUN	Number=Plur	21 crowds	nmod
24	spread	spread	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	8 boom	conj
25	out	out	ADP	_	24 spread	compound:prt
26	looking	look	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	24 spread	advcl
27	for	for	ADP	_	28 food	case
28	food	food	NOUN	Number=Sing	26 looking	obl
29	,	,	PUNCT	_	30 swim	punct
30	swim	swim	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	8 boom	conj
31	rivers	river	NOUN	Number=Plur	30 swim	obj
32	and	and	CCONJ	_	33 lakes	cc
33	lakes	lake	NOUN	Number=Plur	31 rivers	conj
34	,	,	PUNCT	_	37 drown	punct
35	and	and	CCONJ	_	37 drown	cc
36	some	some	PRON	PronType=Ind	37 drown	nsubj
37	drown	drown	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	8 boom	conj
38	,	,	PUNCT	_	42 want	punct
39	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	42 want	advmod
40	because	because	SCONJ	_	42 want	mark
41	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	42 want	nsubj
42	want	want	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	37 drown	advcl
43	to	to	PART	_	44 die	mark
44	die	die	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	42 want	xcomp
45	but	but	CCONJ	_	49 moving	cc
46	because	because	SCONJ	_	49 moving	mark
47	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	49 moving	nsubj
48	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	49 moving	aux
49	moving	move	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	42 want	conj
50	on	on	ADP	_	49 moving	compound:prt
51	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 stranger	punct

Pragmatics

form: statement
act: assert
voice: narrator
polarity: neg
teacher: kept the draft

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	is	present	the truth			strange property	tree rules
2	boom	present	lemming numbers				vn animal_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent
3	crash	infinitive	lemming numbers not said here		year		vn break-45.1 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient
4	spread out	present	crowds of lemmings		year		vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
5	look	gerund	crowds of lemmings not said here			for food	vn rummage-35.5 «NP V PP.location PP.theme»: agent=Agent for food=Theme
6	swim	present	lemming numbers not said here	rivers and lakes			vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme river=Trajectory
7	drown	present	some				vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
8	not want	present	crowds = crowd				vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme
9	die not said to happen	to-infinitive	crowds = crowd not said here				vn calibratable_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute
10	move on	present · progressive	crowds = crowd				vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme 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:150-myth-check-do-lemmings-jump-off-cliffs.lesson:3.

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 ×2, 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/150-myth-check-do-lemmings-jump-off-cliffs/3/