---
title: A blue tang has a sharp spine like a little knife near its tail that… — Finding Nemo: real blue tangs, sea turtles and r… · tree and pragmatics
description: A blue tang has a sharp spine like a little knife near its tail that it can flick out to defend itself. Who acts: blue tang, tail. A sentence of the lesson «Finding Nemo: real blue tangs, sea turtles and reef creatures» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the 
---

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# Finding Nemo: real blue tangs, sea turtles and reef creatures, sentence 5

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A blue tang has a sharp spine like a little knife near its tail that it can flick out to defend itself.

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**Who acts:** blue tang, tail · **What happens:** have, flick out, defend · **To what, where:** sharp spine, tail

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Finding Nemo: real blue tangs, sea turtles and reef creatures» 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 (blue tang, tail), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:133-finding-nemo-dory-turtles-and-the-reef.lesson:5
# text = A blue tang has a sharp spine like a little knife near its tail that it can flick out to defend itself.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 133-finding-nemo-dory-turtles-and-the-reef.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	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	blue	blue	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	tang	tang	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	has	have	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	sharp	sharp	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	spine	spine	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
8	like	like	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	knife	knife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	_
12	near	near	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
15	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	18	obj	_	_
16	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
17	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
18	flick	flick	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	acl:relcl	_	_
19	out	out	ADP	RP	_	18	compound:prt	_	_
20	to	to	PART	TO	_	21	mark	_	_
21	defend	defend	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	advcl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=18:xcomp
22	itself	itself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	21	obj	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed polarity=none

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | present | a blue tang | a sharp spine |  |  |  | like a little knife near knife's tail | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent spine=Patient |
| 2 | **flick out** | can | tail | knife's tail |  |  |  |  | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent that=Theme |
| 3 | **defend** | to-infinitive | tail *not said here* | tail |  |  |  |  | vn defend-72.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent itself=Beneficiary |

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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:133-finding-nemo-dory-turtles-and-the-reef.lesson:5`.

**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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- next →: [Finding Nemo: real blue tangs, sea tur…, 6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/133-finding-nemo-dory-turtles-and-the-reef/6/)
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