---
title: Octopuses are thought to be colour-blind, yet they match their backg… — Animal minds: the octopus, escape artist and puz… · tree and pragmatics
description: Octopuses are thought to be colour-blind, yet they match their background so well that scientists still argue about how. Who acts: enemies, scientists. A sentence of the lesson «Animal minds: the octopus, escape artist and puzzle solver» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its depend
---

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# Animal minds: the octopus, escape artist and puzzle solver, sentence 10

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Octopuses are thought to be colour-blind, yet they match their background so well that scientists still argue about how.

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**Who acts:** enemies, scientists · **What happens:** think, be, match, argue · **To what, where:** Octopuses, background

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Animal minds: the octopus, escape artist and puzzle solver» 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 (enemies, scientists), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver.lesson:10
# text = Octopuses are thought to be colour-blind, yet they match their background so well that scientists still argue about how.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver.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): R8-pos-agree ×1
1	Octopuses	octopus	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
2	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux:pass	_	_
3	thought	think	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
5	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	cop	_	_
6	colour	colour	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	xcomp	_	_
7	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=8:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:,:_
8	blind	blind	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	conj	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	yet	yet	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	match	match	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
13	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	background	background	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
15	so	so	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
16	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	12	advmod	_	_
17	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	20	mark	_	_
18	scientists	scientist	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nsubj	_	_
19	still	still	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	argue	argue	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	_
21	about	about	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	20	advmod	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
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 | **think** *speech: other* | present · passive |  | Octopuses |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | colour *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **be** |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **match** | present | enemies *= enemy* | enemies's background |  |  |  | well *property* | vn amalgamate-22.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent background=Patient |
| 5 | **argue** *speech: disagree* | present | scientists |  |  |  | still |  | vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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:234-animal-minds-the-octopus-escape-artist-and-puzzle-solver.lesson:10`.

**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): R8-pos-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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