The savanna: grass, trees and the great herds, sentence 10
African elephants are the largest land animals, weighing about 6 tonnes or more; they spray dust and mud to protect their skin and flap their big ears to cool their blood.
Who acts: African elephants, tonnes · What happens: be, weigh, spray, protect, flap, cool · To what, where: largest land animals, 6 tonnes, dust, skin, big ears, blood
This is a sentence of the lesson «The savanna: grass, trees and the great herds» 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 (African elephants, tonnes), 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 | African | African | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 2 elephants | amod |
| 2 | elephants | elephant | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 animals | nsubj |
| 3 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 7 animals | cop |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 7 animals | det |
| 5 | largest | large | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 7 animals | amod |
| 6 | land | land | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 animals | compound |
| 7 | animals | animal | NOUN | Number=Plur | root | root |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 12 tonnes | punct |
| 9 | weighing | weigh | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 7 animals | advcl |
| 10 | about | about | ADV | _ | 11 6 | advmod |
| 11 | 6 | 6 | NUM | NumForm=Digit NumType=Card | 12 tonnes | nummod |
| 12 | tonnes | tonne | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 weighing | obj |
| 13 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 14 more | cc |
| 14 | more | more | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 12 tonnes | conj |
| 15 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 17 spray | punct |
| 16 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 17 spray | nsubj |
| 17 | spray | spray | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 7 animals | parataxis |
| 18 | dust | dust | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 spray | obj |
| 19 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 20 mud | cc |
| 20 | mud | mud | NOUN | Number=Sing | 18 dust | conj |
| 21 | to | to | PART | _ | 22 protect | mark |
| 22 | protect | protect | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 17 spray | advcl |
| 23 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 24 skin | nmod:poss |
| 24 | skin | skin | NOUN | Number=Sing | 22 protect | obj |
| 25 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 26 flap | cc |
| 26 | flap | flap | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 22 protect | conj |
| 27 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 29 ears | nmod:poss |
| 28 | big | big | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 29 ears | amod |
| 29 | ears | ear | NOUN | Number=Plur | 26 flap | obj |
| 30 | to | to | PART | _ | 31 cool | mark |
| 31 | cool | cool | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 26 flap | advcl |
| 32 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 33 blood | nmod:poss |
| 33 | blood | blood | NOUN | Number=Sing | 31 cool | obj |
| 34 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 7 animals | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | present | African elephants | the largest land animals | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | weigh | gerund | African elephants not said here | 6 tonnes | vn register-54.1-2-1 «NP V NP.value»: agent=Theme tonne=Value | ||||
| 3 | spray | present | tonnes = tonne | dust and mud | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent dust=Theme | ||||
| 4 | protect | to-infinitive | tonnes = tonne not said here | tonnes's skin | vn defend-72.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent skin=Beneficiary | ||||
| 5 | flap | infinitive | tonnes = tonne not said here | tonnes's big ears | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ear=Patient | ||||
| 6 | cool | to-infinitive | tonnes = tonne not said here | tonnes's blood | vn other_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent blood=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:004-the-savanna.lesson:10.
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): no change. 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/4-the-savanna/10/