How owls work: silent wings, turning heads, pellets and owl myths, sentence 7
Owl flight feathers have a comb-like front edge, a soft fringe at the back and a velvety surface, which break the air into tiny swirls and make almost no sound; engineers have copied them for quieter fans and wind turbines.
Who acts: Owl flight feathers, velvety surface, engineers · What happens: have, break, make, copy · To what, where: like front edge, air, tiny swirls, sound, edges
This is a sentence of the lesson «How owls work: silent wings, turning heads, pellets and owl myths» 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 (Owl flight feathers, velvety surface, engineers), 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 | Owl | owl | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 feathers | compound |
| 2 | flight | flight | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 feathers | compound |
| 3 | feathers | feather | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 have | nsubj |
| 4 | have | have | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 10 edge | det |
| 6 | comb | comb | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 like | compound |
| 7 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 6 comb | punct |
| 8 | like | like | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 10 edge | amod |
| 9 | front | front | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 10 edge | amod |
| 10 | edge | edge | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 have | obj |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 fringe | punct |
| 12 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 14 fringe | det |
| 13 | soft | soft | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 14 fringe | amod |
| 14 | fringe | fringe | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 edge | appos |
| 15 | at | at | ADP | _ | 17 back | case |
| 16 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 17 back | det |
| 17 | back | back | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 fringe | nmod |
| 18 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 21 surface | cc |
| 19 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 21 surface | det |
| 20 | velvety | velvety | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 21 surface | amod |
| 21 | surface | surface | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 edge | conj |
| 22 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 24 break | punct |
| 23 | which | which | PRON | PronType=Rel | 24 break | nsubj |
| 24 | break | break | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 21 surface | acl:relcl |
| 25 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 26 air | det |
| 26 | air | air | NOUN | Number=Sing | 24 break | obj |
| 27 | into | into | ADP | _ | 29 swirls | case |
| 28 | tiny | tiny | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 29 swirls | amod |
| 29 | swirls | swirl | NOUN | Number=Plur | 24 break | obl |
| 30 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 31 make | cc |
| 31 | make | make | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 24 break | conj |
| 32 | almost | almost | ADV | _ | 34 sound | advmod |
| 33 | no | no | DET | PronType=Neg | 34 sound | det |
| 34 | sound | sound | NOUN | Number=Sing | 31 make | obj |
| 35 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 38 copied | punct |
| 36 | engineers | engineer | NOUN | Number=Plur | 38 copied | nsubj |
| 37 | have | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 38 copied | aux |
| 38 | copied | copy | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | 4 have | parataxis |
| 39 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 38 copied | obj |
| 40 | for | for | ADP | _ | 42 fans | case |
| 41 | quieter | quiet | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 42 fans | amod |
| 42 | fans | fan | NOUN | Number=Plur | 38 copied | obl |
| 43 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 45 turbines | cc |
| 44 | wind | wind | NOUN | Number=Sing | 45 turbines | compound |
| 45 | turbines | turbine | NOUN | Number=Plur | 42 fans | conj |
| 46 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 have | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | have | present | Owl flight feathers | a like front edge and a velvety surface | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent edge=Patient | ||||
| 2 | break | present | a velvety surface | the air | into tiny swirls result | vn break-45.1 «NP V NP PP.result»: agent=Agent air=Patient into swirl=Result | |||
| 3 | make | present | a velvety surface not said here | no sound | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset sound=Product | ||||
| 4 | copy | present · perfect | engineers | edges = edge | for quieter fans and wind turbines | vn scribble-25.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme |
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:302-how-owls-work-silent-wings-turning-heads-pellets-and-owl-myths.lesson:7.
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 ×2, 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/302-how-owls-work-silent-wings-turning-heads-pellets-and-owl-myths/7/