---
title: Foxes scream at night, mostly in winter, to attract mates and mark t… — Foxes and squirrels · tree and pragmatics
description: Foxes scream at night, mostly in winter, to attract mates and mark territory, and people sometimes mistake the sound for a person screaming. Who acts: Foxes, people, person. A sentence of the lesson «Foxes and squirrels» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/215-foxes-and-squirrels/4/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / [Foxes and squirrels](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/215-foxes-and-squirrels/) / 4

# Foxes and squirrels, sentence 4

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Foxes scream at night, mostly in winter, to attract mates and mark territory, and people sometimes mistake the sound for a person screaming.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Foxes, people, person · **What happens:** scream, attract, mark, mistake · **To what, where:** mates, territory, sound

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Foxes and squirrels» 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 (Foxes, people, person), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:215-foxes-and-squirrels.lesson:4
# text = Foxes scream at night, mostly in winter, to attract mates and mark territory, and people sometimes mistake the sound for a person screaming.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 215-foxes-and-squirrels.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	Foxes	fox	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
2	scream	scream	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	at	at	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	mostly	mostly	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
7	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	winter	winter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	attract	attract	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	advcl	_	_
12	mates	mate	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obj	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	mark	mark	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	conj	_	_
15	territory	territory	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
18	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nsubj	_	_
19	sometimes	sometimes	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	20	advmod	_	_
20	mistake	mistake	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	sound	sound	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obj	_	_
23	for	for	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
24	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	25	det	_	_
25	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obl	_	_
26	screaming	scream	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	25	acl	_	_
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	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 | **scream** *speech: express* | present | Foxes |  |  |  | night; winter |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **attract** | to-infinitive | Foxes *not said here* | mates |  |  |  |  | vn lure-59.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent mate=Patient |
| 3 | **mark** | infinitive | Foxes *not said here* | territory |  |  |  |  | vn image\_impression-25.1 «NP V NP.destination»: agent=Agent territory=Destination |
| 4 | **mistake** | present | people | the sound |  |  |  | for a person; sometimes *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **scream** *speech: express* | gerund | a person *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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:215-foxes-and-squirrels.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): 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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Foxes and squirrels, 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/215-foxes-and-squirrels/3/)
- next →: [Foxes and squirrels, 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/215-foxes-and-squirrels/5/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/215-foxes-and-squirrels/)