The reptile house: snakes, sentence 1
Its forked tongue flicks in and out not to sting but to smell: the two tips pick up scent from the air and tell the snake which side the smell is stronger on.
Who acts: forked tongue, two tips, smell · What happens: fork, flick, not sting, smell, pick up, tell · To what, where: scent, air, side, snake · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of the lesson «The reptile house: snakes» 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 (forked tongue, two tips, smell), 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 | Its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 3 tongue | nmod:poss |
| 2 | forked | fork | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 3 tongue | amod |
| 3 | tongue | tongue | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 flicks | nsubj |
| 4 | flicks | flick | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 5 | in | in | ADV | _ | 4 flicks | advmod |
| 6 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 7 out | cc |
| 7 | out | out | ADV | _ | 5 in | conj |
| 8 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 10 sting | advmod |
| 9 | to | to | PART | _ | 10 sting | mark |
| 10 | sting | sting | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 4 flicks | advcl |
| 11 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 13 smell | cc |
| 12 | to | to | PART | _ | 13 smell | mark |
| 13 | smell | smell | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 10 sting | conj |
| 14 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 18 pick | punct |
| 15 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 17 tips | det |
| 16 | two | two | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 17 tips | nummod |
| 17 | tips | tip | NOUN | Number=Plur | 18 pick | nsubj |
| 18 | pick | pick | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 4 flicks | parataxis |
| 19 | up | up | ADP | _ | 18 pick | compound:prt |
| 20 | scent | scent | NOUN | Number=Sing | 18 pick | obj |
| 21 | from | from | ADP | _ | 23 air | case |
| 22 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 23 air | det |
| 23 | air | air | NOUN | Number=Sing | 18 pick | obl |
| 24 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 25 tell | cc |
| 25 | tell | tell | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 18 pick | conj |
| 26 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 27 snake | det |
| 27 | snake | snake | NOUN | Number=Sing | 25 tell | iobj |
| 28 | which | which | DET | PronType=Int | 29 side | det |
| 29 | side | side | NOUN | Number=Sing | 25 tell | obj |
| 30 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 31 smell | det |
| 31 | smell | smell | NOUN | Number=Sing | 34 on | nsubj |
| 32 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 34 on | cop |
| 33 | stronger | strong | ADV | Degree=Cmp | 34 on | advmod |
| 34 | on | on | ADV | _ | 29 side | acl:relcl |
| 35 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 flicks | punct |
Pragmatics
- form
- statement
- act
- assert
- voice
- narrator
- polarity
- none
- teacher
- kept the draft
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | fork | participle | vn pocket-9.10 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent | ||||||
| 2 | flick | present | python's forked tongue | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 3 | not sting | to-infinitive | python's forked tongue not said here | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer | |||||
| 4 | smell | to-infinitive | python's forked tongue not said here | vn smell_emission-43.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||||
| 5 | pick up | present | the two tips | scent | the air | vn discover-84-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent scent=Topic | |||
| 6 | tell speech: assert | infinitive | the two tips not said here | which side | the snake | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent snake=Recipient side=Topic | |||
| 7 | is | present | the smell | which side not said here | on, strong property | tree rules |
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:087-reptile-house-snakes.lesson:1.
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): R1-cc-next ×1, R5-strong ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1, R8-pos-agree ×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/87-reptile-house-snakes/1/