---
title: Some city robins sing at night under streetlamps, because the light… — The city as a habitat · tree and pragmatics
description: Some city robins sing at night under streetlamps, because the light tricks them and night is quieter; great tits in noisy cities sing higher notes than forest great tits. Who acts: city robins, light, night, great tits. A sentence of the lesson «The city as a habitat» of the biology course of Mova's
---

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# The city as a habitat, sentence 8

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Some city robins sing at night under streetlamps, because the light tricks them and night is quieter; great tits in noisy cities sing higher notes than forest great tits.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** city robins, light, night, great tits · **What happens:** sing, trick, be · **To what, where:** streetlamps, robins, higher notes

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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 (city robins, light, night, great tits), 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:8
# text = Some city robins sing at night under streetlamps, because the light tricks them and night is quieter; great tits in noisy cities sing higher notes than forest great tits.
# 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): no change
1	Some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	3	det	_	_
2	city	city	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
3	robins	robin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	sing	sing	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	at	at	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
7	under	under	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	streetlamps	streetlamp	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	light	light	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	tricks	trick	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
14	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
16	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
17	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
18	quieter	quiet	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	13	conj	_	_
19	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
20	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	tits	tit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	25	nsubj	_	_
22	in	in	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
23	noisy	noisy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	24	amod	_	_
24	cities	city	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	21	nmod	_	_
25	sing	sing	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
26	higher	high	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	27	amod	_	_
27	notes	note	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	25	obj	_	_
28	than	than	ADP	IN	_	31	case	_	_
29	forest	forest	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	31	compound	_	_
30	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	31	amod	_	_
31	tits	tit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	25	obl	_	_
32	.	.	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 | **sing** *speech: express* | present | some city robins |  |  | streetlamps | night |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme under streetlamp=Location |
| 2 | **trick** | present | the light | robins *= robin* |  |  |  |  | vn trick-59.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Patient |
| 3 | **is** | present | night |  |  |  |  | quiet *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **sing** *speech: express* | present | great tits in noisy cities | higher notes |  |  |  | than forest great tits | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location note=Theme |

<!-- .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:8`.

**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): no change. **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 -->

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