---
title: The aye-aye's teeth keep growing like a rodent's, so scientists firs… — Madagascar: real lemurs, the aye-aye and the fossa · tree and pragmatics
description: The aye-aye's teeth keep growing like a rodent's, so scientists first thought it was a kind of squirrel. Who acts: teeth, scientists, aye. A sentence of the lesson «Madagascar: real lemurs, the aye-aye and the fossa» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pra
---

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# Madagascar: real lemurs, the aye-aye and the fossa, sentence 11

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The aye-aye's teeth keep growing like a rodent's, so scientists first thought it was a kind of squirrel.

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**Who acts:** teeth, scientists, aye · **What happens:** keep, grow, think, be · **To what, where:** kind · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Madagascar: real lemurs, the aye-aye and the fossa» 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 (teeth, scientists, aye), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:127-madagascar-real-lemurs.lesson:11
# text = The aye-aye's teeth keep growing like a rodent's, so scientists first thought it was a kind of squirrel.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 127-madagascar-real-lemurs.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): R8-pos-agree ×1
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
2	aye	aye	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
3	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	2	punct	_	_
4	aye	aye	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	nmod:poss	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=6:nmod:poss|HaikuPos=NOUN:NN:Number=Sing
5	's	's	PART	POS	_	4	case	_	_
6	teeth	tooth	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	keep	keep	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	growing	grow	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	xcomp	_	_
9	like	like	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	rodent	rodent	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
12	's	's	PART	POS	_	11	case	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
14	so	so	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
15	scientists	scientist	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	nsubj	_	_
16	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	17	advmod	_	_
17	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
18	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
19	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	cop	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	kind	kind	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	ccomp	_	_
22	of	of	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
23	squirrel	squirrel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nmod	_	_
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: pos
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **keep** | present | the aye aye's teeth |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **grow** | gerund | the aye aye's teeth *not said here* |  |  |  |  | like a rodent | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **think** *speech: other* | past | scientists |  |  |  |  | first *property* | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **is a** | past | aye | a kind |  |  |  | of squirrel | tree rules |

<!-- .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:127-madagascar-real-lemurs.lesson:11`.

**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): 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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