How scientists test animal minds: the mirror test, puzzle boxes and Clever Hans, sentence 11

Over a hundred years ago a scientist put cats in puzzle boxes and timed them; they got faster with each try, learning by trial and error.

Who acts: scientist, scientists · What happens: put, time, get, learn · To what, where: cats, puzzle boxes, scientists

This is a sentence of the lesson «How scientists test animal minds: the mirror test, puzzle boxes and Clever Hans» 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 (scientist, scientists), 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	Over	over	ADP	_	5 ago	case
2	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	5 ago	det
3	hundred	hundred	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	4 years	nummod
4	years	year	NOUN	Number=Plur	5 ago	obl:unmarked
5	ago	ago	ADV	_	8 put	advmod
6	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	7 scientist	det
7	scientist	scientist	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 put	nsubj
8	put	put	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
9	cats	cat	NOUN	Number=Plur	8 put	obj
10	in	in	ADP	_	12 boxes	case
11	puzzle	puzzle	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 boxes	compound
12	boxes	box	NOUN	Number=Plur	8 put	obl
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	14 timed	cc
14	timed	time	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	8 put	conj
15	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 timed	obj
16	;	;	PUNCT	_	18 got	punct
17	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	18 got	nsubj
18	got	get	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	8 put	conj
19	faster	fast	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	18 got	xcomp
20	with	with	ADP	_	22 try	case
21	each	each	DET	PronType=Tot	22 try	det
22	try	try	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 got	obl
23	,	,	PUNCT	_	24 learning	punct
24	learning	learn	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	18 got	advcl
25	by	by	ADP	_	26 trial	case
26	trial	trial	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 learning	obl
27	and	and	CCONJ	_	28 error	cc
28	error	error	NOUN	Number=Sing	26 trial	conj
29	.	.	PUNCT	_	8 put	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	put	past	a scientist	cats	puzzle boxes	ago property	vn put-9.1-2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent cat=Theme in box=Destination
2	time	past	a scientist not said here	scientists = scientist			vn register-54.1-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme
3	get	past	scientists = scientist			with each try; fast property	vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Experiencer
4	learn	gerund	scientists = scientist not said here			by trial and error	vn learn-14-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent

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:389-how-scientists-test-animal-minds-the-mirror-test-puzzle-boxes-and-clever-hans.lesson:11.

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): R3-conj-first ×1, 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/389-how-scientists-test-animal-minds-the-mirror-test-puzzle-boxes-and-clever-hans/11/