---
title: A gull drops a shellfish onto rocks from a height to smash the shell… — Gulls: chip thieves, rain dances and salty water · tree and pragmatics
description: A gull drops a shellfish onto rocks from a height to smash the shell open. Who acts: gull. A sentence of the lesson «Gulls: chip thieves, rain dances and salty water» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/223-gulls-chip-thieves-rain-dances-and-salty-water/11/)

<!-- 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/) / [Gulls: chip thieves, rain dances and s…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/223-gulls-chip-thieves-rain-dances-and-salty-water/) / 11

# Gulls: chip thieves, rain dances and salty water, sentence 11

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A gull drops a shellfish onto rocks from a height to smash the shell open.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** gull · **What happens:** drop, smash · **To what, where:** shellfish, rocks, shell

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Gulls: chip thieves, rain dances and salty water» 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 (gull), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:223-gulls-chip-thieves-rain-dances-and-salty-water.lesson:11
# text = A gull drops a shellfish onto rocks from a height to smash the shell open.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 223-gulls-chip-thieves-rain-dances-and-salty-water.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	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	gull	gull	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	drops	drop	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	shellfish	shellfish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	onto	onto	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	rocks	rock	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=5:obl
8	from	from	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	height	height	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	smash	smash	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	shell	shell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
15	open	open	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	xcomp	_	_
16	.	.	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 | **drop** | present | a gull | a shellfish |  | rocks |  | from a height | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP PP.initial\_location PP.destination»: agent=Agent shellfish=Theme onto rock=Destination from height=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **smash** | to-infinitive | a gull *not said here* | the shell |  |  |  | open *property* | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent shell=Theme |

<!-- .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:223-gulls-chip-thieves-rain-dances-and-salty-water.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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Gulls: chip thieves, rain dances and s…, 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/223-gulls-chip-thieves-rain-dances-and-salty-water/10/)
- next →: [Gulls: chip thieves, rain dances and s…, 12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/223-gulls-chip-thieves-rain-dances-and-salty-water/12/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/223-gulls-chip-thieves-rain-dances-and-salty-water/)