---
title: Ostriches swallow pebbles, which collect in the gizzard and grind to… — Myth check: do ostriches bury their heads in the… · tree and pragmatics
description: Ostriches swallow pebbles, which collect in the gizzard and grind tough food, because birds have no teeth. Who acts: Ostriches, pebbles, birds. A sentence of the lesson «Myth check: do ostriches bury their heads in the sand?» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree an
---

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# Myth check: do ostriches bury their heads in the sand?, sentence 12

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Ostriches swallow pebbles, which collect in the gizzard and grind tough food, because birds have no teeth.

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**Who acts:** Ostriches, pebbles, birds · **What happens:** swallow, collect, grind, have · **To what, where:** pebbles, gizzard, tough food, teeth

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Myth check: do ostriches bury their heads in the sand?» 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 (Ostriches, pebbles, birds), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:151-ostriches-and-heads-in-the-sand.lesson:12
# text = Ostriches swallow pebbles, which collect in the gizzard and grind tough food, because birds have no teeth.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 151-ostriches-and-heads-in-the-sand.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	Ostriches	ostrich	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
2	swallow	swallow	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	pebbles	pebble	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	6	nsubj	_	_
6	collect	collect	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	acl:relcl	_	_
7	in	in	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	gizzard	gizzard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	grind	grind	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=6:conj|HaikuPos=VERB:VB:VerbForm=Inf
12	tough	tough	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	food	food	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
15	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
16	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	nsubj	_	_
17	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
18	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	19	det	_	_
19	teeth	tooth	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	obj	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **swallow** | present | Ostriches | pebbles |  |  |  |  | vn gobble-39.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent pebble=Patient |
| 2 | **collect** | present | pebbles |  |  | the gizzard |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **grind** | present | pebbles *not said here* | tough food |  |  |  |  | vn carve-21.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent food=Patient |
| 4 | **have** | present | birds | no teeth |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tooth=Patient |

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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:151-ostriches-and-heads-in-the-sand.lesson:12`.

**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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- ← previous: [Myth check: do ostriches bury their he…, 11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/151-ostriches-and-heads-in-the-sand/11/)
- next →: [Myth check: do ostriches bury their he…, 13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/151-ostriches-and-heads-in-the-sand/13/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/151-ostriches-and-heads-in-the-sand/)