---
title: Porcupines cannot shoot their quills; the barbed quills come out eas… — More animal myths: red rags, camel humps, porcup… · tree and pragmatics
description: Porcupines cannot shoot their quills; the barbed quills come out easily when touched and stick into the attacker. Who acts: Porcupines, barbed quills. A sentence of the lesson «More animal myths: red rags, camel humps, porcupine arrows, toads and falling cats» of the biology course of Mova's primary
---

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# More animal myths: red rags, camel humps, porcupine arrows, toads and falling cats, sentence 7

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Porcupines cannot shoot their quills; the barbed quills come out easily when touched and stick into the attacker.

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**Who acts:** Porcupines, barbed quills · **What happens:** not shoot, come out, touch, stick · **To what, where:** quills, attacker

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This is a sentence of the lesson «More animal myths: red rags, camel humps, porcupine arrows, toads and falling cats» 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 (Porcupines, barbed quills), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:154-more-animal-myths-from-cartoons.lesson:7
# text = Porcupines cannot shoot their quills; the barbed quills come out easily when touched and stick into the attacker.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 154-more-animal-myths-from-cartoons.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): R5-strong ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	Porcupines	porcupine	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
2	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	shoot	shoot	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	quills	quill	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
7	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	barbed	barbed	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	quills	quill	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
11	come	come	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:conj|HaikuPos=VERB:VB:VerbForm=Inf
12	out	out	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
13	easily	easily	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=15:advmod
14	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	15	advmod	_	_
15	touched	touch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	advcl	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	stick	stick	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	conj	_	_
18	into	into	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	attacker	attacker	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	_
21	.	.	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** **shoot** | can | Porcupines | litres's quills |  |  |  |  | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent quill=Theme |
| 2 | **come out** | present | the barbed quills |  |  |  |  | easily, out *property* | vn become-109.1 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **touch** | participle | the barbed quills *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **stick** | infinitive | the barbed quills *not said here* |  |  | the attacker |  |  | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V PP.destination»: agent=Theme into attacker=Destination |

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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:154-more-animal-myths-from-cartoons.lesson:7`.

**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): R5-strong ×1, 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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