Natural selection we can watch: moths, finches, germs and tuskless elephants, sentence 16
Birds ate the stick insects that looked least like twigs, so over many generations the survivors looked more and more like twigs; camouflage is a classic result of natural selection.
Who acts: Birds, stick insects, survivors, camouflage · What happens: eat, look, be · To what, where: stick insects, classic result
This is a sentence of the lesson «Natural selection we can watch: moths, finches, germs and tuskless elephants» 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 (Birds, stick insects, survivors, camouflage), 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 | Birds | bird | NOUN | Number=Plur | 2 ate | nsubj |
| 2 | ate | eat | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 5 insects | det |
| 4 | stick | stick | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 insects | compound |
| 5 | insects | insect | NOUN | Number=Plur | 2 ate | obj |
| 6 | that | that | PRON | PronType=Rel | 7 looked | nsubj |
| 7 | looked | look | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 insects | acl:relcl |
| 8 | least | least | ADV | Degree=Sup | 7 looked | advmod |
| 9 | like | like | ADP | _ | 10 twigs | case |
| 10 | twigs | twig | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 looked | obl |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 18 looked | punct |
| 12 | so | so | ADV | _ | 18 looked | advmod |
| 13 | over | over | ADP | _ | 15 generations | case |
| 14 | many | many | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 15 generations | amod |
| 15 | generations | generation | NOUN | Number=Plur | 18 looked | obl |
| 16 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 17 survivors | det |
| 17 | survivors | survivor | NOUN | Number=Plur | 18 looked | nsubj |
| 18 | looked | look | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 ate | parataxis |
| 19 | more | more | ADV | Degree=Cmp | 18 looked | advmod |
| 20 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 21 more | cc |
| 21 | more | more | ADV | Degree=Cmp | 19 more | conj |
| 22 | like | like | ADP | _ | 23 twigs | case |
| 23 | twigs | twig | NOUN | Number=Plur | 18 looked | obl |
| 24 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 29 result | punct |
| 25 | camouflage | camouflage | NOUN | Number=Sing | 29 result | nsubj |
| 26 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 29 result | cop |
| 27 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 29 result | det |
| 28 | classic | classic | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 29 result | amod |
| 29 | result | result | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 ate | parataxis |
| 30 | of | of | ADP | _ | 32 selection | case |
| 31 | natural | natural | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 32 selection | amod |
| 32 | selection | selection | NOUN | Number=Sing | 29 result | nmod |
| 33 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 ate | 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 | eat | past | Birds | the stick insects | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent insect=Patient | ||||
| 2 | look | past | the stick insects | like twigs; least property | vn stimulus_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus | ||||
| 3 | look | past | the survivors | over many generations | like twigs | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent over generation=Theme | |||
| 4 | is a | present | camouflage | a classic result | of natural selection | tree rules |
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:279-natural-selection-we-can-watch-moths-finches-germs-and-tuskless-elephants.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): 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/279-natural-selection-we-can-watch-moths-finches-germs-and-tuskless-elephants/16/