---
title: The black mask round a raccoon's eyes may reduce glare and help it s… — Raccoons, opossums and skunks · tree and pragmatics
description: The black mask round a raccoon's eyes may reduce glare and help it see at night, though scientists are not completely sure. Who acts: black mask, raccoon, scientists. A sentence of the lesson «Raccoons, opossums and skunks» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and 
---

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# Raccoons, opossums and skunks, sentence 7

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The black mask round a raccoon's eyes may reduce glare and help it see at night, though scientists are not completely sure.

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**Who acts:** black mask, raccoon, scientists · **What happens:** reduce, help, see, not be · **To what, where:** glare, raccoon

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Raccoons, opossums and skunks» 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 (black mask, raccoon, scientists), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:224-raccoons-opossums-and-skunks.lesson:7
# text = The black mask round a raccoon's eyes may reduce glare and help it see at night, though scientists are not completely sure.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 224-raccoons-opossums-and-skunks.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	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	mask	mask	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
4	round	round	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	raccoon	raccoon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod:poss	_	_
7	's	's	PART	POS	_	6	case	_	_
8	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nmod	_	_
9	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	reduce	reduce	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
11	glare	glare	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	conj	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
16	at	at	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	_
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
19	though	though	SCONJ	IN	_	24	mark	_	_
20	scientists	scientist	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	24	nsubj	_	_
21	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	24	cop	_	_
22	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	24	advmod	_	_
23	completely	completely	ADV	RB	_	24	advmod	_	_
24	sure	sure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	conj	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	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 | **reduce** | may | the black mask round a raccoon's eyes | glare |  |  |  |  | vn limit-76 «NP V NP»: agent=Causer glare=Patient |
| 2 | **help** | infinitive | the black mask round a raccoon's eyes *not said here* | raccoon |  |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent it=Beneficiary clause=Theme |
| 3 | **see** | infinitive | raccoon *not said here* |  |  |  | night |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 4 | **not** **is** | present | scientists |  |  |  |  | completely, sure *property* | tree rules |

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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:224-raccoons-opossums-and-skunks.lesson:7`.

**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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