---
title: The ancestors of elephants, around 55 million years ago, were pig-si… — Elephants: the trunk and everything it does · tree and pragmatics
description: The ancestors of elephants, around 55 million years ago, were pig-sized animals with no trunk. Who acts: ancestors. 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 19

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The ancestors of elephants, around 55 million years ago, were pig-sized animals with no trunk.

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**Who acts:** ancestors · **What happens:** size, be · **To what, where:** sized animals

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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 (ancestors), 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:19
# text = The ancestors of elephants, around 55 million years ago, were pig-sized animals with no trunk.
# 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): no change
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	ancestors	ancestor	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	elephants	elephant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nmod	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
6	around	around	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
7	55	55	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	8	compound	_	_
8	million	million	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	9	nummod	_	_
9	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl:unmarked	_	_
10	ago	ago	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
12	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
13	pig	pig	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	compound	_	_
14	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	13	punct	_	_
15	sized	size	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	16	amod	_	_
16	animals	animal	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	_
17	with	with	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	19	det	_	_
19	trunk	trunk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	16	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **size** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is a** | past | the ancestors of elephants | sized animals |  |  |  | with no trunk; ago *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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:19`.

**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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- ← previous: [Elephants: the trunk and everything it…, 18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/21-elephants-the-trunk/18/)
- next →: [Elephants: families, tusks, ears and m…, 0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/22-elephants-families-tusks-ears-memory/0/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/21-elephants-the-trunk/)