Animal builders: termite mounds, weaver birds and other nest makers, sentence 14

Some swiftlets build nests almost entirely from their own hardened spit, and people collect them for bird's nest soup, an expensive food in China; the nests are costly because they must be collected carefully from cave walls so the birds can still breed.

Who acts: swiftlets, people, nests, birds · What happens: build, harden, collect, be, breed · To what, where: nests, own hardened spit, swiftlets, people, cave walls

This is a sentence of the lesson «Animal builders: termite mounds, weaver birds and other nest makers» 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 (swiftlets, people, nests, birds), 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	Some	some	DET	PronType=Ind	2 swiftlets	det
2	swiftlets	swiftlet	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 build	nsubj
3	build	build	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	nests	nest	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 build	obj
5	almost	almost	ADV	_	6 entirely	advmod
6	entirely	entirely	ADV	_	3 build	advmod
7	from	from	ADP	_	11 spit	case
8	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	11 spit	nmod:poss
9	own	own	ADJ	Degree=Pos	11 spit	amod
10	hardened	harden	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	11 spit	amod
11	spit	spit	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 build	obl
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 collect	punct
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	15 collect	cc
14	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	15 collect	nsubj
15	collect	collect	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	3 build	conj
16	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	15 collect	obj
17	for	for	ADP	_	21 soup	case
18	bird	bird	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 soup	nmod:poss
19	's	's	PART	_	18 bird	case
20	nest	nest	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 soup	compound
21	soup	soup	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 collect	obl
22	,	,	PUNCT	_	25 food	punct
23	an	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	25 food	det
24	expensive	expensive	ADJ	Degree=Pos	25 food	amod
25	food	food	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 soup	appos
26	in	in	ADP	_	27 China	case
27	China	China	PROPN	Number=Sing	25 food	nmod
28	;	;	PUNCT	_	32 costly	punct
29	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	30 nests	det
30	nests	nest	NOUN	Number=Plur	32 costly	nsubj
31	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	32 costly	cop
32	costly	costly	ADJ	Degree=Pos	11 spit	parataxis
33	because	because	SCONJ	_	37 collected	mark
34	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	37 collected	nsubj:pass
35	must	must	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	37 collected	aux
36	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	37 collected	aux:pass
37	collected	collect	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	32 costly	advcl
38	carefully	carefully	ADV	_	37 collected	advmod
39	from	from	ADP	_	41 walls	case
40	cave	cave	NOUN	Number=Sing	41 walls	compound
41	walls	wall	NOUN	Number=Plur	37 collected	obl
42	so	so	SCONJ	_	47 breed	mark
43	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	44 birds	det
44	birds	bird	NOUN	Number=Plur	47 breed	nsubj
45	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	47 breed	aux
46	still	still	ADV	_	47 breed	advmod
47	breed	breed	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	37 collected	advcl
48	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 build	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	build	present	some swiftlets	nests	swiftlets's own hardened spit		entirely property	vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V PP»: agent=Asset nest=Product from spit=Material
2	harden	participle						vn other_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient
3	collect	present	people	swiftlets = swiftlet			for bird's nest soup	vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme
4	is	present	the nests				costly property	tree rules
5	collect	must · passive		people	cave walls		carefully property	vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP PP.source»: subject=Theme from wall=Source
6	breed	can	the birds			still		tree rules

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:243-animal-builders-termite-mounds-weaver-birds-and-other-nest-makers.lesson:14.

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 ×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/243-animal-builders-termite-mounds-weaver-birds-and-other-nest-makers/14/