---
title: Rats are good swimmers and can hold their breath for a few minutes,… — Rats and mice in the city, and the elephant and… · tree and pragmatics
description: Rats are good swimmers and can hold their breath for a few minutes, so they can swim through pipes. Who acts: Rats. A sentence of the lesson «Rats and mice in the city, and the elephant and mouse myth» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of ever
---

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# Rats and mice in the city, and the elephant and mouse myth, sentence 8

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Rats are good swimmers and can hold their breath for a few minutes, so they can swim through pipes.

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**Who acts:** Rats · **What happens:** be, hold, swim · **To what, where:** good swimmers, breath, pipes

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Rats and mice in the city, and the elephant and mouse myth» 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 (Rats), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:222-rats-and-mice-in-the-city-and-the-elephant-and-mouse-myth.lesson:8
# text = Rats are good swimmers and can hold their breath for a few minutes, so they can swim through pipes.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 222-rats-and-mice-in-the-city-and-the-elephant-and-mouse-myth.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): R7-rel-agree ×1
1	Rats	rat	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
2	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	swimmers	swimmer	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
6	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	hold	hold	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
8	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	breath	breath	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	for	for	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	minutes	minute	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
15	so	so	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=18:cc|HaikuPos=CCONJ:CC:_
16	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
17	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
18	swim	swim	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	conj	_	_
19	through	through	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	pipes	pipe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	obl	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	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 | **is a** | present | Rats | good swimmers |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **hold** | can | Rats *not said here* | rats's breath |  |  | minute |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent breath=Theme |
| 3 | **swim** | can | rats *= rat* |  |  | pipes |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme through pipe=Trajectory |

<!-- .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:222-rats-and-mice-in-the-city-and-the-elephant-and-mouse-myth.lesson:8`.

**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): R7-rel-agree ×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: [Rats and mice in the city, and the ele…, 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/222-rats-and-mice-in-the-city-and-the-elephant-and-mouse-myth/7/)
- next →: [Rats and mice in the city, and the ele…, 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/222-rats-and-mice-in-the-city-and-the-elephant-and-mouse-myth/9/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/222-rats-and-mice-in-the-city-and-the-elephant-and-mouse-myth/)