Evolution: why giraffes really have long necks, sentence 17
There are no animals with wheels, because each step of evolution must work on its own and a wheel cannot be built step by step from living parts that need blood and nerves; bacteria do have tiny spinning motors.
Who acts: animals, step, living parts, bacteria · What happens: be, work, not build, live, need, have · To what, where: wheel, living parts, blood, tiny spinning motors, evolution
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 (animals, step, living parts, bacteria), 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 | There | there | PRON | PronType=Dem | 2 are | expl |
| 2 | are | be | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | no | no | DET | PronType=Neg | 4 animals | det |
| 4 | animals | animal | NOUN | Number=Plur | 2 are | nsubj |
| 5 | with | with | ADP | _ | 6 wheels | case |
| 6 | wheels | wheel | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 animals | nmod |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 work | punct |
| 8 | because | because | SCONJ | _ | 14 work | mark |
| 9 | each | each | DET | PronType=Tot | 10 step | det |
| 10 | step | step | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 work | nsubj |
| 11 | of | of | ADP | _ | 12 evolution | case |
| 12 | evolution | evolution | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 step | nmod |
| 13 | must | must | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 14 work | aux |
| 14 | work | work | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 are | advcl |
| 15 | on | on | ADP | _ | 17 own | case |
| 16 | its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 17 own | nmod:poss |
| 17 | own | own | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 14 work | obl |
| 18 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 24 built | cc |
| 19 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 20 wheel | det |
| 20 | wheel | wheel | NOUN | Number=Sing | 24 built | nsubj:pass |
| 21 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 24 built | aux |
| 22 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 24 built | advmod |
| 23 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 24 built | aux:pass |
| 24 | built | build | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 14 work | advcl |
| 25 | step | step | NOUN | Number=Sing | 24 built | obl |
| 26 | by | by | ADP | _ | 27 step | case |
| 27 | step | step | NOUN | Number=Sing | 24 built | obl |
| 28 | from | from | ADP | _ | 30 parts | case |
| 29 | living | live | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 30 parts | amod |
| 30 | parts | part | NOUN | Number=Plur | 24 built | obl |
| 31 | that | that | PRON | PronType=Rel | 32 need | nsubj |
| 32 | need | need | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 30 parts | acl:relcl |
| 33 | blood | blood | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 need | obj |
| 34 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 35 nerves | cc |
| 35 | nerves | nerve | NOUN | Number=Plur | 33 blood | conj |
| 36 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 39 have | punct |
| 37 | bacteria | bacterium | NOUN | Number=Plur | 39 have | nsubj |
| 38 | do | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 39 have | aux |
| 39 | have | have | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 are | parataxis |
| 40 | tiny | tiny | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 42 motors | amod |
| 41 | spinning | spin | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 42 motors | amod |
| 42 | motors | motor | NOUN | Number=Plur | 39 have | obj |
| 43 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 are | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | does | present | no animals with wheels | there | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 2 | work | must | each step of evolution | on step's own | vn employment-95.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent on own=Theme | ||||
| 3 | not build | can · passive | step | a wheel | living parts | step obl | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V PP»: agent=Asset subject=Product from part=Material | ||
| 4 | live | gerund | vn exist-47.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||||
| 5 | need | present | living parts | blood and nerves | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot blood=Theme | ||||
| 6 | have | present · do-support | bacteria | tiny spinning motors | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent motor=Patient | ||||
| 7 | spin | gerund | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme | ||||||
| 8 | step | evolution | nom step «act transitive»: of=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:17.
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/17/