---
title: Many gulls have moved into towns and nest on flat rooftops, because… — Gulls: chip thieves, rain dances and salty water · tree and pragmatics
description: Many gulls have moved into towns and nest on flat rooftops, because cities have food and safe roofs away from foxes. Who acts: Many gulls, cities. 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 t
---

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# Gulls: chip thieves, rain dances and salty water, sentence 8

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Many gulls have moved into towns and nest on flat rooftops, because cities have food and safe roofs away from foxes.

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**Who acts:** Many gulls, cities · **What happens:** move, nest, have · **To what, where:** towns, flat rooftops, food

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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 (Many gulls, cities), 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:8
# text = Many gulls have moved into towns and nest on flat rooftops, because cities have food and safe roofs away from foxes.
# 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): no change
1	Many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	gulls	gull	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	moved	move	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	into	into	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	towns	town	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	nest	nest	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
9	on	on	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	flat	flat	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	rooftops	rooftop	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
14	cities	city	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	nsubj	_	_
15	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
16	food	food	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
18	safe	safe	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	roofs	roof	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	conj	_	_
20	away	away	ADV	RB	_	15	parataxis	_	_
21	from	from	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	foxes	fox	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	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 | **move** | present · perfect | Many gulls |  |  | towns |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V PP.trajectory»: agent=Theme into town=Trajectory |
| 2 | **nest** | present | Many gulls *not said here* |  |  | flat rooftops |  |  | vn berry-13.7 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **have** | present | cities | food and safe roofs |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent food=Patient |

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