---
title: On the savanna, giraffes reach high leaves, zebras eat tough tall gr… — Marty, Gloria and Melman: real zebras, hippos an… · tree and pragmatics
description: On the savanna, giraffes reach high leaves, zebras eat tough tall grass, and wildebeest eat the shorter grass left behind, and tall giraffes often spot lions first. Who acts: giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, tall giraffes. A sentence of the lesson «Marty, Gloria and Melman: real zebras, hippos and gira
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/128-madagascar-real-zebras-hippos-and-giraffes/17/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / [Marty, Gloria and Melman: real zebras,…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/128-madagascar-real-zebras-hippos-and-giraffes/) / 17

# Marty, Gloria and Melman: real zebras, hippos and giraffes, sentence 17

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
On the savanna, giraffes reach high leaves, zebras eat tough tall grass, and wildebeest eat the shorter grass left behind, and tall giraffes often spot lions first.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, tall giraffes · **What happens:** reach, eat, leave behind, spot · **To what, where:** high leaves, savanna, tough tall grass, shorter grass, lions

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Marty, Gloria and Melman: real zebras, hippos and giraffes» 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 (giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, tall giraffes), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:128-madagascar-real-zebras-hippos-and-giraffes.lesson:17
# text = On the savanna, giraffes reach high leaves, zebras eat tough tall grass, and wildebeest eat the shorter grass left behind, and tall giraffes often spot lions first.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 128-madagascar-real-zebras-hippos-and-giraffes.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): R3-conj-first ×1, R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×1
1	On	on	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	savanna	savanna	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	giraffes	giraffe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
6	reach	reach	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	high	high	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	leaves	leaf	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	zebras	zebra	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
11	eat	eat	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
12	tough	tough	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
13	tall	tall	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	grass	grass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
17	wildebeest	wildebeest	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
18	eat	eat	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	Agree=R3-conj-first|Haiku=11:conj
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
20	shorter	short	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	21	amod	_	_
21	grass	grass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	_
22	left	leave	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	21	acl	_	_
23	behind	behind	ADV	RB	_	22	advmod	_	_
24	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	29	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=30:punct
25	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	29	cc	_	_
26	tall	tall	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	amod	_	_
27	giraffes	giraffe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	29	nsubj	_	_
28	often	often	ADV	RB	_	29	advmod	_	_
29	spot	spot	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	18	conj	_	_
30	lions	lion	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	29	obj	_	_
31	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	29	advmod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=30:advmod
32	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reach** | present | giraffes | high leaves |  | the savanna |  |  | vn body\_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Agent leaf=Theme |
| 2 | **eat** | present | zebras | tough tall grass |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent grass=Patient |
| 3 | **eat** | present | wildebeest | the shorter grass |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent grass=Patient |
| 4 | **leave behind** | participle |  | the shorter grass *not said here* |  |  |  | behind *property* | vn escape-51.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **spot** | present | tall giraffes |  | lions |  |  | first, often *property* | vn fill-9.8-1 «NP V NP.destination»: agent=Agent lion=Destination |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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:128-madagascar-real-zebras-hippos-and-giraffes.lesson:17`.

**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): R3-conj-first ×1, R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Marty, Gloria and Melman: real zebras,…, 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/128-madagascar-real-zebras-hippos-and-giraffes/15/)
- next →: [The penguins of Madagascar: real pengu…, 0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/129-madagascar-real-penguins-and-chimps/0/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/128-madagascar-real-zebras-hippos-and-giraffes/)