---
title: Corals are animals, not plants or rocks: colonies of tiny polyps tha… — Coral reef builders: polyps, bleaching, sand fro… · tree and pragmatics
description: Corals are animals, not plants or rocks: colonies of tiny polyps that build hard skeletons of limestone and at night stretch out tentacles to catch tiny food. Who acts: Corals, tiny polyps. A sentence of the lesson «Coral reef builders: polyps, bleaching, sand from parrotfish and giant clams» of the
---

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# Coral reef builders: polyps, bleaching, sand from parrotfish and giant clams, sentence 4

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Corals are animals, not plants or rocks: colonies of tiny polyps that build hard skeletons of limestone and at night stretch out tentacles to catch tiny food.

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**Who acts:** Corals, tiny polyps · **What happens:** be, build, stretch out, catch · **To what, where:** animals, hard skeletons, tentacles, tiny food

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Coral reef builders: polyps, bleaching, sand from parrotfish and giant clams» 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 (Corals, tiny polyps), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:172-coral-reef-builders-polyps-bleaching-sand-from-parrotfish-and-giant-clams.lesson:4
# text = Corals are animals, not plants or rocks: colonies of tiny polyps that build hard skeletons of limestone and at night stretch out tentacles to catch tiny food.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 172-coral-reef-builders-polyps-bleaching-sand-from-parrotfish-and-giant-clams.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 ×2
1	Corals	coral	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
2	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	animals	animal	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	_
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
6	plants	plant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	conj	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=3:nmod
7	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	rocks	rock	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	conj	_	_
9	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	10	punct	_	_
10	colonies	colony	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	appos	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=3:conj
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	tiny	tiny	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	polyps	polyp	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nmod	_	_
14	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	15	nsubj	_	_
15	build	build	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	acl:relcl	_	_
16	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	skeletons	skeleton	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obj	_	_
18	of	of	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	limestone	limestone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nmod	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
21	at	at	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	obl	_	_
23	stretch	stretch	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	conj	_	_
24	out	out	ADP	RP	_	23	compound:prt	_	_
25	tentacles	tentacle	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	23	obj	_	_
26	to	to	PART	TO	_	27	mark	_	_
27	catch	catch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	23	advcl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=25:acl
28	tiny	tiny	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	29	amod	_	_
29	food	food	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	27	obj	_	_
30	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	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 | Corals | animals and plants or rocks |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **build** | present | tiny polyps | hard skeletons of limestone |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset skeleton=Product |
| 3 | **stretch out** | present | tiny polyps *not said here* | tentacles |  |  | night |  | vn bend-45.2 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent tentacle=Patient |
| 4 | **catch** | to-infinitive | tiny polyps *not said here* | tiny food |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent food=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:172-coral-reef-builders-polyps-bleaching-sand-from-parrotfish-and-giant-clams.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): R5-strong ×1, R7-rel-agree ×2. **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: [Coral reef builders: polyps, bleaching…, 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/172-coral-reef-builders-polyps-bleaching-sand-from-parrotfish-and-giant-clams/3/)
- next →: [Coral reef builders: polyps, bleaching…, 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/172-coral-reef-builders-polyps-bleaching-sand-from-parrotfish-and-giant-clams/5/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/172-coral-reef-builders-polyps-bleaching-sand-from-parrotfish-and-giant-clams/)