Evolution: why giraffes really have long necks, sentence 16
The eye could evolve bit by bit: a light-sensing patch is already useful, a cup shape shows direction, a pinhole makes a picture, and a lens makes it sharp; all these stages exist in living animals today.
Who acts: eye, sensing patch, cup shape, pinhole, lens, stages · What happens: evolve, be, show, make, exist · To what, where: bit, direction, picture
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 (eye, sensing patch, cup shape, pinhole), 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 | 2 eye | det |
| 2 | eye | eye | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 evolve | nsubj |
| 3 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 4 evolve | aux |
| 4 | evolve | evolve | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 5 | bit | bit | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 evolve | obl |
| 6 | by | by | ADP | _ | 7 bit | case |
| 7 | bit | bit | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 bit | fixed |
| 8 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 4 evolve | punct |
| 9 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 13 patch | det |
| 10 | light | light | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 sensing | compound |
| 11 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 10 light | punct |
| 12 | sensing | sensing | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 patch | compound |
| 13 | patch | patch | NOUN | Number=Sing | 16 useful | nsubj |
| 14 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 16 useful | cop |
| 15 | already | already | ADV | _ | 16 useful | advmod |
| 16 | useful | useful | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 4 evolve | parataxis |
| 17 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 21 shows | punct |
| 18 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 20 shape | det |
| 19 | cup | cup | NOUN | Number=Sing | 20 shape | compound |
| 20 | shape | shape | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 shows | nsubj |
| 21 | shows | show | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 16 useful | parataxis |
| 22 | direction | direction | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 shows | obj |
| 23 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 26 makes | punct |
| 24 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 25 pinhole | det |
| 25 | pinhole | pinhole | NOUN | Number=Sing | 26 makes | nsubj |
| 26 | makes | make | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 21 shows | conj |
| 27 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 28 picture | det |
| 28 | picture | picture | NOUN | Number=Sing | 26 makes | obj |
| 29 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 33 makes | punct |
| 30 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 33 makes | cc |
| 31 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 32 lens | det |
| 32 | lens | lens | NOUN | Number=Sing | 33 makes | nsubj |
| 33 | makes | make | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 26 makes | conj |
| 34 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 33 makes | obj |
| 35 | sharp | sharp | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 33 makes | xcomp |
| 36 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 40 exist | punct |
| 37 | all | all | DET | PronType=Tot | 39 stages | det:predet |
| 38 | these | this | DET | Number=Plur PronType=Dem | 39 stages | det |
| 39 | stages | stage | NOUN | Number=Plur | 40 exist | nsubj |
| 40 | exist | exist | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 21 shows | conj |
| 41 | in | in | ADP | _ | 43 animals | case |
| 42 | living | living | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 43 animals | amod |
| 43 | animals | animal | NOUN | Number=Plur | 40 exist | obl |
| 44 | today | today | NOUN | Number=Sing | 40 exist | obl:unmarked |
| 45 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 evolve | punct |
Pragmatics
- form
- statement
- act
- assert
- voice
- narrator
- polarity
- none
- teacher
- kept the draft
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | evolve | could | the eye | bit | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 2 | is | present | a sensing patch | useful property | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | show | present | a cup shape | direction | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent direction=Recipient | ||||
| 4 | make | present | a pinhole | a picture | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset picture=Product | ||||
| 5 | make | present | a lens | picture | sharp property | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset it=Product | |||
| 6 | exist | present | all stages | today | in living animals | vn exist-47.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in animal=Location |
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:16.
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 ×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/16/