---
title: In a meerkat group one animal at a time stands guard on a high spot,… — The African savanna area: hippos, meerkats, ostr… · tree and pragmatics
description: In a meerkat group one animal at a time stands guard on a high spot, and its alarm calls tell the others whether danger comes from the sky, like an eagle, or from the ground, like a jackal. Who acts: one animal, alarm calls, danger, hippo. A sentence of the lesson «The African savanna area: hippos, 
---

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# The African savanna area: hippos, meerkats, ostriches, wild dogs and hyenas, sentence 8

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In a meerkat group one animal at a time stands guard on a high spot, and its alarm calls tell the others whether danger comes from the sky, like an eagle, or from the ground, like a jackal.

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**Who acts:** one animal, alarm calls, danger, hippo · **What happens:** stand, tell, come, call · **To what, where:** guard, meerkat group, others, sky · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «The African savanna area: hippos, meerkats, ostriches, wild dogs and hyenas» 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 (one animal, alarm calls, danger, hippo), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches.lesson:8
# text = In a meerkat group one animal at a time stands guard on a high spot, and its alarm calls tell the others whether danger comes from the sky, like an eagle, or from the ground, like a jackal.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches.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, R7-rel-agree ×1, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	meerkat	meerkat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	group	group	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
5	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	6	nummod	_	_
6	animal	animal	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
7	at	at	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
10	stands	stand	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	guard	guard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
12	on	on	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	high	high	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	spot	spot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=11:nmod
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
18	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	20	nmod:poss	_	_
19	alarm	alarm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	compound	_	_
20	calls	call	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	21	nsubj	_	_
21	tell	tell	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	conj	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=10:conj|HaikuPos=VERB:VB:VerbForm=Inf
22	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	others	other	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	21	obj	_	_
24	whether	whether	SCONJ	IN	_	26	mark	_	_
25	danger	danger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	nsubj	_	_
26	comes	come	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	21	ccomp	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=21:advcl
27	from	from	ADP	IN	_	29	case	_	_
28	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	29	det	_	_
29	sky	sky	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	obl	_	_
30	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	33	punct	_	_
31	like	like	ADP	IN	_	33	case	_	_
32	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	33	det	_	_
33	eagle	eagle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obl	_	_
34	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	38	punct	_	_
35	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	38	cc	_	_
36	from	from	ADP	IN	_	38	case	_	_
37	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	38	det	_	_
38	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	29	conj	_	_
39	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	42	punct	_	_
40	like	like	ADP	IN	_	42	case	_	_
41	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	42	det	_	_
42	jackal	jackal	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obl	_	_
43	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | present | one animal at a time | guard |  | a meerkat group |  | on a high spot | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent guard=Theme in group=Destination |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | present | hippo's alarm calls | the others |  |  |  | like a eagle; like a jackal | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP what S»: agent=Agent other=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 3 | **come** | present | danger |  |  | the sky or the ground |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme from sky=Initial\_Location |
| 4 | **call** |  | hippo |  |  |  |  |  | nom call «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .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:102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches.lesson:8`.

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

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