How animals talk, sentence 14
An African grey parrot named Alex, studied by Irene Pepperberg for 30 years, could name dozens of objects, colours and shapes and count up to six, though most talking parrots just copy sounds.
Who acts: African grey parrot, most talking parrots · What happens: name, study, count up, talk, copy · To what, where: African grey parrot, dozens, sounds
This is a sentence of the lesson «How animals talk» 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 grey parrot, most talking 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 | An | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 4 parrot | det |
| 2 | African | African | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 4 parrot | amod |
| 3 | grey | grey | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 4 parrot | amod |
| 4 | parrot | parrot | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 name | nsubj |
| 5 | named | name | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 4 parrot | acl |
| 6 | Alex | Alex | PROPN | Number=Sing | 5 named | xcomp |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 8 studied | punct |
| 8 | studied | study | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 4 parrot | acl |
| 9 | by | by | ADP | _ | 11 Pepperberg | case |
| 10 | Irene | Irene | PROPN | Number=Sing | 11 Pepperberg | compound |
| 11 | Pepperberg | Pepperberg | PROPN | Number=Sing | 8 studied | obl |
| 12 | for | for | ADP | _ | 14 years | case |
| 13 | 30 | 30 | NUM | NumForm=Digit NumType=Card | 14 years | nummod |
| 14 | years | year | NOUN | Number=Plur | 8 studied | obl |
| 15 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 17 name | punct |
| 16 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 17 name | aux |
| 17 | name | name | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 18 | dozens | dozen | NOUN | Number=Plur | 17 name | obj |
| 19 | of | of | ADP | _ | 20 objects | case |
| 20 | objects | object | NOUN | Number=Plur | 18 dozens | nmod |
| 21 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 22 colours | punct |
| 22 | colours | colour | NOUN | Number=Plur | 20 objects | conj |
| 23 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 24 shapes | cc |
| 24 | shapes | shape | NOUN | Number=Plur | 22 colours | conj |
| 25 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 26 count | cc |
| 26 | count | count | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 17 name | conj |
| 27 | up | up | ADP | _ | 26 count | compound:prt |
| 28 | to | to | ADP | _ | 29 six | case |
| 29 | six | six | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 26 count | obl |
| 30 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 36 copy | punct |
| 31 | though | though | SCONJ | _ | 36 copy | mark |
| 32 | most | most | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 34 parrots | amod |
| 33 | talking | talk | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 34 parrots | amod |
| 34 | parrots | parrot | NOUN | Number=Plur | 36 copy | nsubj |
| 35 | just | just | ADV | _ | 36 copy | advmod |
| 36 | copy | copy | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 26 count | parataxis |
| 37 | sounds | sound | NOUN | Number=Plur | 36 copy | obj |
| 38 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 17 name | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | name | participle | a African grey parrot not said here | vn appoint-29.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 2 | study | participle | a African grey parrot not said here | year | by Irene Pepperberg | vn learn-14-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||
| 3 | name | could | a African grey parrot | dozens of objects and colours and shapes | vn appoint-29.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dozen=Theme | ||||
| 4 | count up | infinitive | a African grey parrot not said here | to six | vn matter-91 «NP V PP.experiencer»: agent=Stimulus to six=Experiencer | ||||
| 5 | talk | gerund | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||||||
| 6 | copy | infinitive | most talking parrots | sounds | vn scribble-25.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sound=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:050-how-animals-talk.lesson:14.
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 ×3, R6-punct-agree ×1, 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/50-how-animals-talk/14/