Evolution: why giraffes really have long necks, sentence 1
The real answer: giraffe calves are born with slightly different neck lengths, and those with longer necks often got more food or won more fights, so they had more babies, who tended to have long necks too.
Who acts: real answer, those, calves, more babies · What happens: bear, get, win, have, tend · To what, where: giraffe calves, more food, more fights, more babies, long necks
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 (real answer, those, calves, more babies), 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 | 3 answer | det |
| 2 | real | real | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 answer | amod |
| 3 | answer | answer | NOUN | Number=Sing | root | root |
| 4 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 8 born | punct |
| 5 | giraffe | giraffe | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 calves | compound |
| 6 | calves | calf | NOUN | Number=Plur | 8 born | nsubj:pass |
| 7 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 8 born | aux:pass |
| 8 | born | bear | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 3 answer | acl:relcl |
| 9 | with | with | ADP | _ | 13 lengths | case |
| 10 | slightly | slightly | ADV | _ | 11 different | advmod |
| 11 | different | different | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 13 lengths | amod |
| 12 | neck | neck | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 lengths | compound |
| 13 | lengths | length | NOUN | Number=Plur | 8 born | obl |
| 14 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 21 got | punct |
| 15 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 21 got | cc |
| 16 | those | that | PRON | Number=Plur PronType=Dem | 21 got | nsubj |
| 17 | with | with | ADP | _ | 19 necks | case |
| 18 | longer | long | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 19 necks | amod |
| 19 | necks | neck | NOUN | Number=Plur | 16 those | nmod |
| 20 | often | often | ADV | _ | 21 got | advmod |
| 21 | got | get | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 8 born | conj |
| 22 | more | more | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 23 food | amod |
| 23 | food | food | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 got | obj |
| 24 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 25 won | cc |
| 25 | won | win | VERB | Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 21 got | conj |
| 26 | more | more | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 27 fights | amod |
| 27 | fights | fight | NOUN | Number=Plur | 25 won | obj |
| 28 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 31 had | punct |
| 29 | so | so | ADV | _ | 31 had | advmod |
| 30 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 31 had | nsubj |
| 31 | had | have | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 21 got | conj |
| 32 | more | more | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 33 babies | amod |
| 33 | babies | baby | NOUN | Number=Plur | 31 had | obj |
| 34 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 36 tended | punct |
| 35 | who | who | PRON | PronType=Rel | 36 tended | nsubj |
| 36 | tended | tend | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 33 babies | acl:relcl |
| 37 | to | to | PART | _ | 38 have | mark |
| 38 | have | have | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 36 tended | xcomp |
| 39 | long | long | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 40 necks | amod |
| 40 | necks | neck | NOUN | Number=Plur | 38 have | obj |
| 41 | too | too | ADV | _ | 38 have | advmod |
| 42 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 answer | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | bear | present · passive | the real answer not said here | giraffe calves | with different neck lengths | vn birth-28.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient | |||
| 2 | get | past | those | more food | often property | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer food=Stimulus | |||
| 3 | win | past | those not said here | more fights | vn succeed-74-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fight=Eventuality | ||||
| 4 | have | past | calves = calf | more babies | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent baby=Patient | ||||
| 5 | tend | past | more babies | tree rules | |||||
| 6 | have | to-infinitive | more babies not said here | long necks | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent neck=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:1.
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, 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/278-evolution-why-giraffes-really-have-long-necks/1/