How owls work: silent wings, turning heads, pellets and owl myths, sentence 8
In many owls the two ears sit at different heights, so a sound reaches each ear at a slightly different time and loudness and the owl can tell up from down as well as left from right.
Who acts: two ears, sound, owl · What happens: sit, reach, tell up, leave · To what, where: many owls, ear, right
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 (two ears, sound, owl), 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 | In | in | ADP | _ | 3 owls | case |
| 2 | many | many | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 owls | amod |
| 3 | owls | owl | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 sit | obl |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 6 ears | det |
| 5 | two | two | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 6 ears | nummod |
| 6 | ears | ear | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 sit | nsubj |
| 7 | sit | sit | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 8 | at | at | ADP | _ | 10 heights | case |
| 9 | different | different | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 10 heights | amod |
| 10 | heights | height | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 sit | obl |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 reaches | punct |
| 12 | so | so | ADV | _ | 15 reaches | advmod |
| 13 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 14 sound | det |
| 14 | sound | sound | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 reaches | nsubj |
| 15 | reaches | reach | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 7 sit | conj |
| 16 | each | each | DET | PronType=Tot | 17 ear | det |
| 17 | ear | ear | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 reaches | obj |
| 18 | at | at | ADP | _ | 22 time | case |
| 19 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 22 time | det |
| 20 | slightly | slightly | ADV | _ | 21 different | advmod |
| 21 | different | different | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 22 time | amod |
| 22 | time | time | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 reaches | obl |
| 23 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 24 loudness | cc |
| 24 | loudness | loudness | NOUN | Number=Sing | 22 time | conj |
| 25 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 29 tell | cc |
| 26 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 27 owl | det |
| 27 | owl | owl | NOUN | Number=Sing | 29 tell | nsubj |
| 28 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 29 tell | aux |
| 29 | tell | tell | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 15 reaches | conj |
| 30 | up | up | ADP | _ | 29 tell | compound:prt |
| 31 | from | from | ADP | _ | 32 down | case |
| 32 | down | down | ADV | _ | 29 tell | advmod |
| 33 | as | as | ADV | _ | 34 well | advmod |
| 34 | well | well | ADV | Degree=Pos | 32 down | advmod |
| 35 | as | as | SCONJ | _ | 36 left | mark |
| 36 | left | leave | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 32 down | advcl |
| 37 | from | from | ADP | _ | 38 right | case |
| 38 | right | right | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 36 left | obl |
| 39 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 7 sit | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | sit | present | the two ears | many owls | at different heights | vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in owl=Location | |||
| 2 | reach | present | a sound | each ear | time | vn body_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Agent ear=Theme | |||
| 3 | tell up speech: assert | can | the owl | down property | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 4 | leave | participle | the owl not said here | right | vn escape-51.1-1-1 «NP V PP.initial_location»: agent=Theme from right=Initial_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:302-how-owls-work-silent-wings-turning-heads-pellets-and-owl-myths.lesson:8.
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. 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/8/