---
title: Ostriches do not bury their heads in sand; they could not breathe, a… — Myth check: do ostriches bury their heads in the… · tree and pragmatics
description: Ostriches do not bury their heads in sand; they could not breathe, and it would not make them safer. Who acts: Ostriches, feathers, ostrich. 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 and t
---

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# Myth check: do ostriches bury their heads in the sand?, sentence 4

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Ostriches do not bury their heads in sand; they could not breathe, and it would not make them safer.

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**Who acts:** Ostriches, feathers, ostrich · **What happens:** not bury, not breathe, not make · **To what, where:** heads, sand, feathers

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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, feathers, ostrich), 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:4
# text = Ostriches do not bury their heads in sand; they could not breathe, and it would not make them safer.
# 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): no change
1	Ostriches	ostrich	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
2	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	bury	bury	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
7	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	sand	sand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
9	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
10	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	breathe	breathe	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	parataxis	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
16	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
17	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	19	aux	_	_
18	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	19	advmod	_	_
19	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	conj	_	_
20	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	obj	_	_
21	safer	safe	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	19	xcomp	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	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 | **not** **bury** | present · do-support | Ostriches | feathers's heads |  | sand |  |  | vn put-9.1-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent head=Theme in sand=Destination |
| 2 | **not** **breathe** | could | feathers *= feather* |  |  |  |  |  | vn breathe-40.1.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **not** **make** | would | ostrich | feathers *= feather* |  |  |  | safe *property* | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.material V NP»: agent=Material they=Product |

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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:4`.

**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/).

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