---
title: House sparrows have nested in holes in buildings beside people for t… — The city as a habitat · tree and pragmatics
description: House sparrows have nested in holes in buildings beside people for thousands of years, but they have become much rarer in some cities like London, and scientists are still working out why. Who acts: House sparrows, sparrows, scientists. A sentence of the lesson «The city as a habitat» of the biology
---

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# The city as a habitat, sentence 15

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
House sparrows have nested in holes in buildings beside people for thousands of years, but they have become much rarer in some cities like London, and scientists are still working out why.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** House sparrows, sparrows, scientists · **What happens:** nest, become, work out · **To what, where:** holes, cities

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This is a sentence of the lesson «The city as a habitat» 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 (House sparrows, sparrows, scientists), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:014-the-city-as-a-habitat.lesson:15
# text = House sparrows have nested in holes in buildings beside people for thousands of years, but they have become much rarer in some cities like London, and scientists are still working out why.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 014-the-city-as-a-habitat.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	House	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	compound	_	_
2	sparrows	sparrow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	nested	nest	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	holes	hole	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
7	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	buildings	building	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nmod	_	_
9	beside	beside	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nmod	_	_
11	for	for	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	thousands	thousand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nmod	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
16	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
17	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
18	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	aux	_	_
19	become	become	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	4	conj	_	_
20	much	much	ADV	RB	_	21	advmod	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=21:advmod|HaikuPos=ADJ:JJ:Degree=Pos
21	rarer	rare	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	19	xcomp	_	_
22	in	in	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
23	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	24	det	_	_
24	cities	city	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	obl	_	_
25	like	like	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
26	London	London	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	24	nmod	_	_
27	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	32	punct	_	_
28	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	32	cc	_	_
29	scientists	scientist	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	32	nsubj	_	_
30	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	32	aux	_	_
31	still	still	ADV	RB	_	32	advmod	_	_
32	working	work	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	conj	_	_
33	out	out	ADP	RP	_	32	compound:prt	_	_
34	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	32	advmod	_	_
35	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	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 | **nest** | present · perfect | House sparrows |  |  | holes in buildings beside people |  | for thousands of years | vn berry-13.7 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **become** | present · perfect | sparrows *= sparrow* |  |  |  |  | in some cities like London *result*; rare *property* | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient in city=Result |
| 3 | **work out** | present · progressive | scientists |  |  |  | still |  | vn discover-84 «NP V how S»: agent=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:014-the-city-as-a-habitat.lesson:15`.

**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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