---
title: On cold desert mornings a roadrunner lifts its back feathers to warm… — Looney Tunes: the real roadrunner and the real c… · tree and pragmatics
description: On cold desert mornings a roadrunner lifts its back feathers to warm a patch of dark skin in the sun, since dark skin takes in more heat. Who acts: roadrunner, dark skin. A sentence of the lesson «Looney Tunes: the real roadrunner and the real coyote» of the biology course of Mova's primary school w
---

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# Looney Tunes: the real roadrunner and the real coyote, sentence 10

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
On cold desert mornings a roadrunner lifts its back feathers to warm a patch of dark skin in the sun, since dark skin takes in more heat.

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**Who acts:** roadrunner, dark skin · **What happens:** lift, warm, take · **To what, where:** back feathers, patch, more heat

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Looney Tunes: the real roadrunner and the real coyote» 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 (roadrunner, dark skin), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:122-looney-tunes-real-roadrunner-and-coyote.lesson:10
# text = On cold desert mornings a roadrunner lifts its back feathers to warm a patch of dark skin in the sun, since dark skin takes in more heat.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 122-looney-tunes-real-roadrunner-and-coyote.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): R7-rel-agree ×1
1	On	on	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	cold	cold	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
3	desert	desert	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	mornings	morning	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	roadrunner	roadrunner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	lifts	lift	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
9	back	back	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=10:amod|HaikuPos=ADJ:JJ:Degree=Pos
10	feathers	feather	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	warm	warm	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	advcl	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	patch	patch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	dark	dark	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	skin	skin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod	_	_
18	in	in	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	sun	sun	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nmod	_	_
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	25	punct	_	_
22	since	since	SCONJ	IN	_	25	mark	_	_
23	dark	dark	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	24	amod	_	_
24	skin	skin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	nsubj	_	_
25	takes	take	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	_
26	in	in	ADP	IN	_	28	case	_	_
27	more	more	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	28	amod	_	_
28	heat	heat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	obl	_	_
29	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	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 | **lift** | present | a roadrunner | family's back feathers |  |  | morning |  | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent feather=Theme |
| 2 | **warm** | to-infinitive | a roadrunner *not said here* | a patch of dark skin in the sun |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent patch=Patient |
| 3 | **take** | present | dark skin |  |  | more heat |  |  | vn fit-54.3 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent in heat=Location |

<!-- .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:122-looney-tunes-real-roadrunner-and-coyote.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): R7-rel-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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