---
title: Elephants sometimes use tools, such as a stick to scratch an itch or… — Elephants: the trunk and everything it does · tree and pragmatics
description: Elephants sometimes use tools, such as a stick to scratch an itch or a leafy branch to swat flies. Who acts: Elephants. A sentence of the lesson «Elephants: the trunk and everything it does» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Elephants: the trunk and everything it does, sentence 16

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Elephants sometimes use tools, such as a stick to scratch an itch or a leafy branch to swat flies.

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**Who acts:** Elephants · **What happens:** use, scratch, swat · **To what, where:** tools, itch, flies

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Elephants: the trunk and everything it does» 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 (Elephants), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:021-elephants-the-trunk.lesson:16
# text = Elephants sometimes use tools, such as a stick to scratch an itch or a leafy branch to swat flies.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 021-elephants-the-trunk.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
1	Elephants	elephant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
2	sometimes	sometimes	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	3	advmod	_	_
3	use	use	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	tools	tool	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
6	such	such	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|ExtPos=ADP	9	case	_	_
7	as	as	ADP	IN	_	6	fixed	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	stick	stick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	scratch	scratch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	acl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=3:advcl
12	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	itch	itch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
16	leafy	leafy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	branch	branch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	conj	_	_
18	to	to	PART	TO	_	19	mark	_	_
19	swat	swat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	advcl	_	_
20	flies	fly	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	obj	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	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 | **use** | present | Elephants | tools |  |  |  | such a stick; sometimes *property* | vn eat-39.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tool=Patient |
| 2 | **scratch** | to-infinitive | Elephants *not said here* | a itch or a leafy branch |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent itch=Theme |
| 3 | **swat** | to-infinitive | Elephants *not said here* | flies |  |  |  |  | vn swat-18.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fly=Patient |

<!-- .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:021-elephants-the-trunk.lesson:16`.

**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. **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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