Evolution: why giraffes really have long necks, sentence 0

An old idea said giraffes stretched their necks to reach high leaves and then passed the longer necks to their babies, but that is wrong: stretching your body does not change the DNA you pass on, just as a weightlifter's babies are not born with big muscles.

Who acts: old idea, giraffes, that, stretching, you · What happens: say, stretch, reach, pass, be, not change · To what, where: necks, high leaves, longer necks, babies, body, DNA · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of the lesson «Evolution: why giraffes really have long necks» 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 (old idea, giraffes, that, stretching), 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	An	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	3 idea	det
2	old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 idea	amod
3	idea	idea	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 said	nsubj
4	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
5	giraffes	giraffe	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 stretched	nsubj
6	stretched	stretch	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 said	ccomp
7	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	8 necks	nmod:poss
8	necks	neck	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 stretched	obj
9	to	to	PART	_	10 reach	mark
10	reach	reach	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	6 stretched	advcl
11	high	high	ADJ	Degree=Pos	12 leaves	amod
12	leaves	leaf	NOUN	Number=Plur	10 reach	obj
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	15 passed	cc
14	then	then	ADV	PronType=Dem	15 passed	advmod
15	passed	pass	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 stretched	conj
16	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	18 necks	det
17	longer	long	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	18 necks	amod
18	necks	neck	NOUN	Number=Plur	15 passed	obj
19	to	to	ADP	_	21 babies	case
20	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	21 babies	nmod:poss
21	babies	baby	NOUN	Number=Plur	15 passed	obl
22	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 wrong	punct
23	but	but	CCONJ	_	26 wrong	cc
24	that	that	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	26 wrong	nsubj
25	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	26 wrong	cop
26	wrong	wrong	ADJ	Degree=Pos	4 said	conj
27	:	:	PUNCT	_	33 change	punct
28	stretching	stretch	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	33 change	csubj
29	your	your	PRON	Case=Gen Person=2 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	30 body	nmod:poss
30	body	body	NOUN	Number=Sing	28 stretching	obj
31	does	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	33 change	aux
32	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	33 change	advmod
33	change	change	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	26 wrong	parataxis
34	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	35 DNA	det
35	DNA	DNA	NOUN	Number=Sing	33 change	obj
36	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	37 pass	nsubj
37	pass	pass	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	35 DNA	acl:relcl
38	on	on	ADP	_	37 pass	compound:prt
39	,	,	PUNCT	_	33 change	punct
40	just	just	ADV	_	48 born	advmod
41	as	as	SCONJ	_	48 born	mark
42	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	43 weightlifter	det
43	weightlifter	weightlifter	NOUN	Number=Sing	45 babies	nmod:poss
44	's	's	PART	_	43 weightlifter	case
45	babies	baby	NOUN	Number=Plur	48 born	nsubj:pass
46	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	48 born	aux:pass
47	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	48 born	advmod
48	born	bear	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	33 change	advcl
49	with	with	ADP	_	51 muscles	case
50	big	big	ADJ	Degree=Pos	51 muscles	amod
51	muscles	muscle	NOUN	Number=Plur	48 born	obl
52	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 said	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	when	other	roles by
1	say speech: assert	past	a old idea					vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
2	stretch	past	giraffes	giraffes's necks				vn bend-45.2 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent neck=Patient
3	reach	to-infinitive	giraffes not said here	high leaves				vn body_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Agent leaf=Theme
4	pass	past	giraffes not said here	the longer necks	giraffes's babies	then		vn give-13.1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent neck=Theme to baby=Recipient
5	is	present	that				wrong property	tree rules
6	stretch	gerund		your body				vn bend-45.2 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent body=Patient
7	not change	present · do-support	stretching	the DNA				vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dna=Patient
8	pass on	present	you	the DNA not said here				vn send-11.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dna=Theme
9	not bear	present · passive		a weightlifter's babies			with big muscles	vn birth-28.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=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:278-evolution-why-giraffes-really-have-long-necks.lesson:0.

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): R2-punct-next ×1, R5-strong ×1, 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/278-evolution-why-giraffes-really-have-long-necks/0/