---
title: Asian small-clawed otters, the smallest otters in the world, juggle… — Sea lions, seals and otters · tree and pragmatics
description: Asian small-clawed otters, the smallest otters in the world, juggle pebbles with their paws, perhaps as play or practice for handling food. Who acts: Asian clawed otters, play. A sentence of the lesson «Sea lions, seals and otters» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency t
---

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# Sea lions, seals and otters, sentence 15

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Asian small-clawed otters, the smallest otters in the world, juggle pebbles with their paws, perhaps as play or practice for handling food.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Asian clawed otters, play · **What happens:** claw, juggle, handle · **To what, where:** pebbles, food

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Sea lions, seals and otters» 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 (Asian clawed otters, play), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:100-sea-lions-seals-and-otters.lesson:15
# text = Asian small-clawed otters, the smallest otters in the world, juggle pebbles with their paws, perhaps as play or practice for handling food.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 100-sea-lions-seals-and-otters.lesson
# annotation = 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 ×1
1	Asian	Asian	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
2	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=5:amod
3	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	2	punct	_	_
4	clawed	claw	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	amod	_	_
5	otters	otter	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nsubj	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	smallest	small	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	9	amod	_	_
9	otters	otter	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	appos	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	world	world	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	juggle	juggle	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	pebbles	pebble	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obj	_	_
16	with	with	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	paws	paw	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obl	_	_
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
20	perhaps	perhaps	ADV	RB	_	22	advmod	_	_
21	as	as	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	play	play	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
23	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	24	cc	_	_
24	practice	practice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	conj	_	_
25	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	26	mark	_	_
26	handling	handle	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	22	acl	_	_
27	food	food	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	obj	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **claw** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn swat-18.2 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **juggle** | present | Asian clawed otters | pebbles |  |  |  | with otters's paws; as play or practice | tree rules |
| 3 | **handle** | gerund | play or practice *not said here* | food |  |  |  |  | vn hold-15.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent food=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/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:100-sea-lions-seals-and-otters.lesson:15`.

**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 ×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](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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