---
title: A hedgehog rolls into a tight ball of spines, a pangolin curls up in… — Defences: skunks, porcupines, hedgehogs and armour · tree and pragmatics
description: A hedgehog rolls into a tight ball of spines, a pangolin curls up in scales so tough that a lion cannot bite through, and a tortoise pulls its head into a shell that is part of its own skeleton. Who acts: hedgehog, pangolin, lion, tortoise. A sentence of the lesson «Defences: skunks, porcupines, hed
---

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# Defences: skunks, porcupines, hedgehogs and armour, sentence 1

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A hedgehog rolls into a tight ball of spines, a pangolin curls up in scales so tough that a lion cannot bite through, and a tortoise pulls its head into a shell that is part of its own skeleton.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** hedgehog, pangolin, lion, tortoise, shell · **What happens:** roll, curl up, not bite, pull, be · **To what, where:** tight ball, scales, head, shell, part

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Defences: skunks, porcupines, hedgehogs and armour» 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 (hedgehog, pangolin, lion, tortoise), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:248-defences-skunks-porcupines-hedgehogs-and-armour.lesson:1
# text = A hedgehog rolls into a tight ball of spines, a pangolin curls up in scales so tough that a lion cannot bite through, and a tortoise pulls its head into a shell that is part of its own skeleton.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 248-defences-skunks-porcupines-hedgehogs-and-armour.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	hedgehog	hedgehog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	rolls	roll	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	into	into	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	tight	tight	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	ball	ball	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	spines	spine	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nmod	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	pangolin	pangolin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	curls	curl	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
14	up	up	ADP	RP	_	13	compound:prt	_	_
15	in	in	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	scales	scale	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obl	_	_
17	so	so	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	tough	tough	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	ccomp	_	_
19	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	24	mark	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	lion	lion	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	nsubj	_	_
22	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	24	aux	_	_
23	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	24	advmod	_	_
24	bite	bite	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	advcl	_	_
25	through	through	ADV	RB	_	24	advmod	_	_
26	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	30	punct	_	_
27	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	30	cc	_	_
28	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	29	det	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=30:det
29	tortoise	tortoise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	30	nsubj	_	_
30	pulls	pull	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
31	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	32	nmod:poss	_	_
32	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	30	obj	_	_
33	into	into	ADP	IN	_	35	case	_	_
34	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	35	det	_	_
35	shell	shell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	30	obl	_	_
36	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	38	nsubj	_	_
37	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	38	cop	_	_
38	part	part	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	35	acl:relcl	_	_
39	of	of	ADP	IN	_	42	case	_	_
40	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	42	nmod:poss	_	_
41	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	42	amod	_	_
42	skeleton	skeleton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	38	nmod	_	_
43	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **roll** | present | a hedgehog |  |  | a tight ball of spines |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme into ball=Destination |
| 2 | **curl up** | present | a pangolin |  |  | scales |  |  | vn coil-9.6-1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **not** **bite** | can | a lion |  |  |  |  | through *property* | vn swat-18.2 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **pull** | present | a tortoise | tortoise's head |  | a shell |  |  | vn push-12-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=Theme |
| 5 | **is a** | present | a shell | part |  |  |  | of tortoise's own skeleton | tree rules |

<!-- .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:248-defences-skunks-porcupines-hedgehogs-and-armour.lesson:1`.

**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/).

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