---
title: A grey parrot called Alex learned to name colours, shapes and number… — The Congo rainforest: gorillas, bonobos, okapis… · tree and pragmatics
description: A grey parrot called Alex learned to name colours, shapes and numbers in experiments with Irene Pepperberg. Who acts: grey parrot. A sentence of the lesson «The Congo rainforest: gorillas, bonobos, okapis and forest elephants» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree a
---

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# The Congo rainforest: gorillas, bonobos, okapis and forest elephants, sentence 13

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A grey parrot called Alex learned to name colours, shapes and numbers in experiments with Irene Pepperberg.

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**Who acts:** grey parrot · **What happens:** call, learn, name · **To what, where:** grey parrot, colours · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «The Congo rainforest: gorillas, bonobos, okapis and forest elephants» 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 (grey parrot), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:159-the-congo-rainforest.lesson:13
# text = A grey parrot called Alex learned to name colours, shapes and numbers in experiments with Irene Pepperberg.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 159-the-congo-rainforest.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	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	grey	grey	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	parrot	parrot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
4	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	acl	_	_
5	Alex	Alex	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	xcomp	_	_
6	learned	learn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	name	name	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
9	colours	colour	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	shapes	shape	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	conj	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	numbers	number	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	conj	_	_
14	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	experiments	experiment	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nmod	_	_
16	with	with	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	Irene	Irene	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	18	compound	_	_
18	Pepperberg	Pepperberg	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	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 | **call** | participle |  | a grey parrot *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **learn** | past | a grey parrot |  |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **name** | to-infinitive | a grey parrot *not said here* | colours and shapes and numbers in experiments with Irene Pepperberg |  |  |  |  | vn appoint-29.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent colour=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:159-the-congo-rainforest.lesson:13`.

**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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