---
title: Stick insects look like twigs and sway like them in the wind, so bir… — Defences: tricks and myths: playing dead, droppi… · tree and pragmatics
description: Stick insects look like twigs and sway like them in the wind, so birds hunting by sight miss them; the longest insect known is a stick insect from China, over 60 centimetres with its legs stretched out. Who acts: Stick insects, birds, longest insect. A sentence of the lesson «Defences: tricks and my
---

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# Defences: tricks and myths: playing dead, dropping tails, ink, and do ostriches bury their heads?, sentence 12

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Stick insects look like twigs and sway like them in the wind, so birds hunting by sight miss them; the longest insect known is a stick insect from China, over 60 centimetres with its legs stretched out.

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**Who acts:** Stick insects, birds, longest insect · **What happens:** look, sway, hunt, miss, know, be · **To what, where:** wind, insects, longest insect, stick insect, China, legs

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Defences: tricks and myths: playing dead, dropping tails, ink, and do ostriches bury their heads?» 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 (Stick insects, birds, longest insect), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches.lesson:12
# text = Stick insects look like twigs and sway like them in the wind, so birds hunting by sight miss them; the longest insect known is a stick insect from China, over 60 centimetres with its legs stretched out.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches.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, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	Stick	stick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	compound	_	_
2	insects	insect	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	look	look	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	like	like	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	twigs	twig	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	sway	sway	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
8	like	like	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obl	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	wind	wind	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=3:obl
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	so	so	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
15	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	nsubj	_	_
16	hunting	hunt	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	15	acl	_	_
17	by	by	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	sight	sight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	_
19	miss	miss	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=3:parataxis|HaikuPos=VERB:VB:VerbForm=Inf
20	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	obj	_	_
21	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	29	punct	_	_
22	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	24	det	_	_
23	longest	long	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	24	amod	_	_
24	insect	insect	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	29	nsubj	_	_
25	known	know	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	24	acl	_	_
26	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	29	cop	_	_
27	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	29	det	_	_
28	stick	stick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	29	compound	_	_
29	insect	insect	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	parataxis	_	_
30	from	from	ADP	IN	_	31	case	_	_
31	China	China	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	29	nmod	_	_
32	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	35	punct	_	_
33	over	over	ADV	RB	_	34	advmod	_	_
34	60	60	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	35	nummod	_	_
35	centimetres	centimetre	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	29	nmod:unmarked	_	_
36	with	with	SCONJ	IN	_	39	mark	_	_
37	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	38	nmod:poss	_	_
38	legs	leg	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	39	nsubj:pass	_	_
39	stretched	stretch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	29	advcl	_	_
40	out	out	ADP	RP	_	39	compound:prt	_	_
41	.	.	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 | **look** | infinitive | Stick insects |  |  |  |  | like twigs | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **sway** | infinitive | Stick insects *not said here* |  |  | the wind |  | like insects *= insect* | vn modes\_of\_being\_with\_motion-47.3 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in wind=Location |
| 3 | **hunt** | gerund | birds *not said here* |  |  |  |  | by sight | vn hunt-35.1 «NP V PP.theme PP.location»: agent=Agent by sight=Location |
| 4 | **miss** | present | birds | insects *= insect* |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer they=Stimulus |
| 5 | **know** | participle |  | the longest insect *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 6 | **is a** | present | the longest insect | a stick insect |  | China |  | 60 centimetres *nmod:unmarked* | tree rules |
| 7 | **stretch out** | participle · passive |  | bird's legs |  |  |  |  | vn bend-45.2 «NP V NP.patient»: subject=Patient |

<!-- .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:249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches.lesson:12`.

**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, 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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