---
title: Pigeons can tell people apart by their faces, and in experiments the… — Pigeons: head bobbing, homing and city cliffs · tree and pragmatics
description: Pigeons can tell people apart by their faces, and in experiments they even learned to tell paintings by different artists apart. Who acts: Pigeons. A sentence of the lesson «Pigeons: head bobbing, homing and city cliffs» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the
---

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# Pigeons: head bobbing, homing and city cliffs, sentence 11

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Pigeons can tell people apart by their faces, and in experiments they even learned to tell paintings by different artists apart.

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**Who acts:** Pigeons · **What happens:** tell, learn · **To what, where:** people, experiments, paintings · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Pigeons: head bobbing, homing and city cliffs» 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 (Pigeons), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs.lesson:11
# text = Pigeons can tell people apart by their faces, and in experiments they even learned to tell paintings by different artists apart.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs.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	Pigeons	pigeon	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
2	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
5	apart	apart	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
6	by	by	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	faces	face	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=5:obl
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	experiments	experiment	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obl	_	_
13	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
14	even	even	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	learned	learn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	xcomp	_	_
18	paintings	painting	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	obj	_	_
19	by	by	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	different	different	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	artists	artist	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	obl	_	_
22	apart	apart	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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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 | **tell** *speech: assert* | can | Pigeons |  | people |  |  | by pigeons's faces; apart *property* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent people=Recipient |
| 2 | **learn** | past | pigeons *= pigeon* |  |  | experiments |  |  | vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | pigeons *= pigeon* *not said here* | paintings |  |  |  | by different artists; apart *property* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent painting=Recipient |

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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:221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs.lesson:11`.

**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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- ← previous: [Pigeons: head bobbing, homing and city…, 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/10/)
- next →: [Pigeons: head bobbing, homing and city…, 12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/12/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/)