Natural selection we can watch: moths, finches, germs and tuskless elephants, sentence 9
When insects such as lice and mosquitoes are sprayed with poison, the survivors breed, and soon most of them carry the resistance; farmers change and mix methods to slow this down.
Who acts: survivors, most, farmers · What happens: spray, breed, carry, change, mix, slow down · To what, where: insects, resistance, methods, this
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 (survivors, most, farmers), 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 | When | when | SCONJ | _ | 9 sprayed | mark |
| 2 | insects | insect | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 sprayed | nsubj |
| 3 | such | such | ADJ | Degree=Pos ExtPos=ADP | 5 lice | case |
| 4 | as | as | ADP | _ | 3 such | fixed |
| 5 | lice | louse | NOUN | Number=Plur | 2 insects | nmod |
| 6 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 7 mosquitoes | cc |
| 7 | mosquitoes | mosquito | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 lice | conj |
| 8 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 9 sprayed | aux:pass |
| 9 | sprayed | spray | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 15 breed | advcl |
| 10 | with | with | ADP | _ | 11 poison | case |
| 11 | poison | poison | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 sprayed | obl |
| 12 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 breed | punct |
| 13 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 14 survivors | det |
| 14 | survivors | survivor | NOUN | Number=Plur | 15 breed | nsubj |
| 15 | breed | breed | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 16 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 22 carry | punct |
| 17 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 22 carry | cc |
| 18 | soon | soon | ADV | _ | 22 carry | advmod |
| 19 | most | most | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 22 carry | nsubj |
| 20 | of | of | ADP | _ | 21 them | case |
| 21 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 19 most | nmod |
| 22 | carry | carry | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 15 breed | conj |
| 23 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 24 resistance | det |
| 24 | resistance | resistance | NOUN | Number=Sing | 22 carry | obj |
| 25 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 27 change | punct |
| 26 | farmers | farmer | NOUN | Number=Plur | 27 change | nsubj |
| 27 | change | change | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 15 breed | parataxis |
| 28 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 29 mix | cc |
| 29 | mix | mix | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 27 change | conj |
| 30 | methods | method | NOUN | Number=Plur | 29 mix | obj |
| 31 | to | to | PART | _ | 32 slow | mark |
| 32 | slow | slow | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 27 change | advcl |
| 33 | this | this | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 32 slow | obj |
| 34 | down | down | ADP | _ | 32 slow | compound:prt |
| 35 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 15 breed | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | spray | present · passive | insects such lice and mosquitoes | with poison | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP.destination PP.theme»: subject=Destination with poison=Theme | ||||
| 2 | breed | present | the survivors | tree rules | |||||
| 3 | carry | present | most of survivors | the resistance | soon property | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent resistance=Theme | |||
| 4 | change | present | farmers | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 5 | mix | present | farmers not said here | methods | vn mix-22.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent method=Patient | ||||
| 6 | slow down | to-infinitive | farmers not said here | this | vn other_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent this=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:279-natural-selection-we-can-watch-moths-finches-germs-and-tuskless-elephants.lesson:9.
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, R8-pos-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/279-natural-selection-we-can-watch-moths-finches-germs-and-tuskless-elephants/9/