Animal builders: termite mounds, weaver birds and other nest makers, sentence 3
Birds are builders too: a weaver bird ties real knots in grass, a swallow sticks hundreds of beakfuls of mud under your roof, and a bowerbird builds a stage just to show off.
Who acts: Birds, weaver bird, swallow, bowerbird · What happens: be, tie, stick, build, show off · To what, where: builders, real knots, grass, hundreds, roof, stage
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 (Birds, weaver bird, swallow, bowerbird), 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 | Birds | bird | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 builders | nsubj |
| 2 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 3 builders | cop |
| 3 | builders | builder | NOUN | Number=Plur | root | root |
| 4 | too | too | ADV | _ | 3 builders | advmod |
| 5 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 9 ties | punct |
| 6 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 8 bird | det |
| 7 | weaver | weaver | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 bird | compound |
| 8 | bird | bird | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 ties | nsubj |
| 9 | ties | tie | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 3 builders | parataxis |
| 10 | real | real | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 11 knots | amod |
| 11 | knots | knot | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 ties | obj |
| 12 | in | in | ADP | _ | 13 grass | case |
| 13 | grass | grass | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 ties | obl |
| 14 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 17 sticks | punct |
| 15 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 16 swallow | det |
| 16 | swallow | swallow | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 sticks | nsubj |
| 17 | sticks | stick | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 9 ties | conj |
| 18 | hundreds | hundred | NOUN | Number=Plur | 17 sticks | obj |
| 19 | of | of | ADP | _ | 20 beakfuls | case |
| 20 | beakfuls | beakful | NOUN | Number=Plur | 18 hundreds | nmod |
| 21 | of | of | ADP | _ | 22 mud | case |
| 22 | mud | mud | NOUN | Number=Sing | 20 beakfuls | nmod |
| 23 | under | under | ADP | _ | 25 roof | case |
| 24 | your | your | PRON | Case=Gen Person=2 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 25 roof | nmod:poss |
| 25 | roof | roof | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 sticks | obl |
| 26 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 30 builds | punct |
| 27 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 30 builds | cc |
| 28 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 29 bowerbird | det |
| 29 | bowerbird | bowerbird | NOUN | Number=Sing | 30 builds | nsubj |
| 30 | builds | build | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 17 sticks | conj |
| 31 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 32 stage | det |
| 32 | stage | stage | NOUN | Number=Sing | 30 builds | obj |
| 33 | just | just | ADV | _ | 35 show | advmod |
| 34 | to | to | PART | _ | 35 show | mark |
| 35 | show | show | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 30 builds | advcl |
| 36 | off | off | ADP | _ | 35 show | compound:prt |
| 37 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 builders | 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 | Birds | builders | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | tie | present | a weaver bird | real knots | grass | vn mix-22.1-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent knot=Patient | |||
| 3 | stick | present | a swallow | hundreds of beakfuls of mud | your roof | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent hundred=Theme under roof=Destination | |||
| 4 | build | present | a bowerbird | a stage | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset stage=Product | ||||
| 5 | show off | to-infinitive | a bowerbird not said here | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
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: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 ×2, R7-rel-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/243-animal-builders-termite-mounds-weaver-birds-and-other-nest-makers/3/