How scientists test animal minds: the mirror test, puzzle boxes and Clever Hans, sentence 17

When Alex named a thing correctly he was often given that very thing as his reward; scientists argue how much he understood, but he showed parrots can do far more than copy sounds.

Who acts: Alex, scientists, parrots · What happens: name, give, argue, understand, show, do · To what, where: thing, Alex, much, more · Speech: someone speaks here

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 (Alex, scientists, parrots), 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	_	3 named	mark
2	Alex	Alex	PROPN	Number=Sing	3 named	nsubj
3	named	name	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	10 given	advcl
4	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	5 thing	det
5	thing	thing	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 named	obj
6	correctly	correctly	ADV	_	3 named	advmod
7	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	10 given	nsubj:pass
8	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	10 given	aux:pass
9	often	often	ADV	_	10 given	advmod
10	given	give	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
11	that	that	DET	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	13 thing	det
12	very	very	ADJ	Degree=Pos	13 thing	amod
13	thing	thing	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 given	obj
14	as	as	ADP	_	16 reward	case
15	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	16 reward	nmod:poss
16	reward	reward	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 given	obl
17	;	;	PUNCT	_	19 argue	punct
18	scientists	scientist	NOUN	Number=Plur	19 argue	nsubj
19	argue	argue	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	10 given	parataxis
20	how	how	ADV	PronType=Int	21 much	advmod
21	much	much	ADJ	Degree=Pos	23 understood	obj
22	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	23 understood	nsubj
23	understood	understand	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	19 argue	ccomp
24	,	,	PUNCT	_	27 showed	punct
25	but	but	CCONJ	_	27 showed	cc
26	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	27 showed	nsubj
27	showed	show	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	19 argue	conj
28	parrots	parrot	NOUN	Number=Plur	30 do	nsubj
29	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	30 do	aux
30	do	do	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	27 showed	ccomp
31	far	far	ADV	Degree=Pos	32 more	advmod
32	more	more	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	30 do	obj
33	than	than	ADP	_	35 sounds	case
34	copy	copy	NOUN	Number=Sing	35 sounds	compound
35	sounds	sound	NOUN	Number=Plur	32 more	obl
36	.	.	PUNCT	_	10 given	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	name	past	Alex	a thing	correctly property	vn appoint-29.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thing=Theme
2	give	past · passive		Alex	as Alex's reward; often property	vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: subject=Recipient thing=Theme
3	argue speech: disagree	present	scientists			vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V what S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
4	understand	past	Alex	much		vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer much=Stimulus
5	show	past	Alex			vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
6	do	can	parrots	more		vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent more=Eventuality
7	reward		Alex			nom reward «event transitive»: poss=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:17.

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): R2-punct-next ×1, 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/389-how-scientists-test-animal-minds-the-mirror-test-puzzle-boxes-and-clever-hans/17/