---
title: Elephant seals are the largest seals and, like other seals, have fou… — The Southern Ocean: blue whales, colossal squid… · tree and pragmatics
description: Elephant seals are the largest seals and, like other seals, have four flippers; the males have big noses like a short trunk, fight on beaches, and the seals can dive more than a kilometre and a half deep. Who acts: Elephant seals, males, seals. A sentence of the lesson «The Southern Ocean: blue whal
---

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# The Southern Ocean: blue whales, colossal squid and life under the ice, sentence 15

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Elephant seals are the largest seals and, like other seals, have four flippers; the males have big noses like a short trunk, fight on beaches, and the seals can dive more than a kilometre and a half deep.

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**Who acts:** Elephant seals, males, seals · **What happens:** be, have, fight, dive · **To what, where:** largest seals, four flippers, big noses, beaches

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This is a sentence of the lesson «The Southern Ocean: blue whales, colossal squid and life under the ice» 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 (Elephant seals, males, seals), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice.lesson:15
# text = Elephant seals are the largest seals and, like other seals, have four flippers; the males have big noses like a short trunk, fight on beaches, and the seals can dive more than a kilometre and a half deep.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice.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): R3-conj-first ×1, R5-strong ×2, R7-rel-agree ×1, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	Elephant	elephant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	compound	_	_
2	seals	seal	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	largest	large	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	6	amod	_	_
6	seals	seal	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	like	like	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	seals	seal	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	conj	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
13	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
14	four	four	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	15	nummod	_	_
15	flippers	flipper	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	_
16	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	19	punct	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	males	male	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	nsubj	_	_
19	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	Agree=R3-conj-first|Haiku=13:conj
20	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	noses	nose	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	obj	_	_
22	like	like	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
23	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	25	det	_	_
24	short	short	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	25	amod	_	_
25	trunk	trunk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nmod	_	_
26	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
27	fight	fight	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	conj	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=25:conj|HaikuPos=NOUN:NN:Number=Sing
28	on	on	ADP	IN	_	29	case	_	_
29	beaches	beach	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	27	obl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=27:nmod
30	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	35	punct	_	_
31	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	35	cc	_	_
32	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	33	det	_	_
33	seals	seal	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	35	nsubj	_	_
34	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	35	aux	_	_
35	dive	dive	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	19	conj	_	_
36	more	more	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	35	advmod	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=35:advmod|HaikuPos=ADV:RBR:Degree=Cmp
37	than	than	ADP	IN	_	39	case	_	_
38	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	39	det	_	_
39	kilometre	kilometre	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	36	obl	_	_
40	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	43	cc	_	_
41	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	42	det	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=43:det
42	half	half	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	43	advmod	_	_
43	deep	deep	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	35	conj	_	_
44	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | Elephant seals | the largest seals and other seals |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** | present | Elephant seals *not said here* | four flippers |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent flipper=Patient |
| 3 | **have** | present | the males | big noses |  |  |  | like a short trunk | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nose=Patient |
| 4 | **fight** | present | the males *not said here* |  |  | beaches |  |  | vn battle-36.4-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **dive** | can | the seals |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1-1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |

<!-- .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:171-the-southern-ocean-blue-whales-colossal-squid-and-life-under-the-ice.lesson:15`.

**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): R3-conj-first ×1, R5-strong ×2, R7-rel-agree ×1, 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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