Evolution: why giraffes really have long necks, sentence 12
Evolution means fitting the place you live, not getting better in general; a fish is not worse than a person, it is fitted to water, and if the place changes, the best fit changes too.
Who acts: Evolution, you, fish, place, best fit · What happens: mean, fit, live, not get, not be, change · To what, where: place, fish, water
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 (Evolution, you, fish, place), 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 | Evolution | evolution | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 means | nsubj |
| 2 | means | mean | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | fitting | fit | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 2 means | xcomp |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 5 place | det |
| 5 | place | place | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 fitting | obj |
| 6 | you | you | PRON | Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs | 7 live | nsubj |
| 7 | live | live | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 5 place | acl:relcl |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 getting | punct |
| 9 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 10 getting | advmod |
| 10 | getting | get | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 3 fitting | conj |
| 11 | better | good | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 10 getting | xcomp |
| 12 | in | in | ADP | _ | 13 general | case |
| 13 | general | general | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 11 better | obl |
| 14 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 19 worse | punct |
| 15 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 16 fish | det |
| 16 | fish | fish | NOUN | Number=Sing | 19 worse | nsubj |
| 17 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 19 worse | cop |
| 18 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 19 worse | advmod |
| 19 | worse | bad | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 2 means | parataxis |
| 20 | than | than | ADP | _ | 22 person | case |
| 21 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 22 person | det |
| 22 | person | person | NOUN | Number=Sing | 19 worse | obl |
| 23 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 26 fitted | punct |
| 24 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 26 fitted | nsubj:pass |
| 25 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 26 fitted | aux:pass |
| 26 | fitted | fit | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 2 means | conj |
| 27 | to | to | ADP | _ | 28 water | case |
| 28 | water | water | NOUN | Number=Sing | 26 fitted | obl |
| 29 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 34 changes | punct |
| 30 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 39 changes | cc |
| 31 | if | if | SCONJ | _ | 34 changes | mark |
| 32 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 33 place | det |
| 33 | place | place | NOUN | Number=Sing | 34 changes | nsubj |
| 34 | changes | change | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 39 changes | advcl |
| 35 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 34 changes | punct |
| 36 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 38 fit | det |
| 37 | best | good | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 38 fit | amod |
| 38 | fit | fit | NOUN | Number=Sing | 39 changes | nsubj |
| 39 | changes | change | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 26 fitted | conj |
| 40 | too | too | ADV | _ | 39 changes | advmod |
| 41 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 means | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | mean | present | Evolution | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 2 | fit not said to happen | gerund | Evolution not said here | the place | vn adjust-26.9 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent place=Patient | ||||
| 3 | live | present | you | the place not said here | vn lodge-46 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme place=Location | ||||
| 4 | not get | gerund | Evolution not said here | good property | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Experiencer | ||||
| 5 | not is | present | a fish | than a person; bad property | tree rules | ||||
| 6 | fit | present · passive | fish | to water goal | vn adjust-26.9 «NP V NP PP»: subject=Patient to water=Goal | ||||
| 7 | change a condition, not said to happen | present | the place | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 8 | change | present | the best fit | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «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:278-evolution-why-giraffes-really-have-long-necks.lesson:12.
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, R7-rel-agree ×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/278-evolution-why-giraffes-really-have-long-necks/12/