---
title: A pufferfish swallows water to blow up to several times its size, wh… — Defences: tricks and myths: playing dead, droppi… · tree and pragmatics
description: A pufferfish swallows water to blow up to several times its size, which makes it hard to swallow, but this is tiring and stressful, so it does not do it for fun. Who acts: pufferfish, size, this. A sentence of the lesson «Defences: tricks and myths: playing dead, dropping tails, ink, and do ostriche
---

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# Defences: tricks and myths: playing dead, dropping tails, ink, and do ostriches bury their heads?, sentence 9

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A pufferfish swallows water to blow up to several times its size, which makes it hard to swallow, but this is tiring and stressful, so it does not do it for fun.

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**Who acts:** pufferfish, size, this · **What happens:** swallow, blow up, make, be, not do · **To what, where:** water, pufferfish

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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 (pufferfish, size, this), 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:9
# text = A pufferfish swallows water to blow up to several times its size, which makes it hard to swallow, but this is tiring and stressful, so it does not do it for fun.
# 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): R7-rel-agree ×1, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	pufferfish	pufferfish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	swallows	swallow	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	blow	blow	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=3:xcomp
7	up	up	ADP	RP	_	6	compound:prt	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	several	several	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	_
11	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	size	size	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	conj	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	15	nsubj	_	_
15	makes	make	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	acl:relcl	_	_
16	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obj	_	_
17	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	xcomp	_	_
18	to	to	PART	TO	_	19	mark	_	_
19	swallow	swallow	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	xcomp	_	_
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
21	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	24	cc	_	_
22	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	24	nsubj	_	_
23	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	24	cop	_	_
24	tiring	tire	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=3:conj|HaikuPos=VERB:VBG:Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part
25	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	26	cc	_	_
26	stressful	stressful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	24	conj	_	_
27	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	32	punct	_	_
28	so	so	ADV	RB	_	32	advmod	_	_
29	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	32	nsubj	_	_
30	does	do	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	32	aux	_	_
31	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	32	advmod	_	_
32	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	24	conj	_	_
33	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	32	obj	_	_
34	for	for	ADP	IN	_	35	case	_	_
35	fun	fun	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	32	obl	_	_
36	.	.	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 | **swallow** | present | a pufferfish | water |  |  |  |  | vn gobble-39.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent water=Patient |
| 2 | **blow up** | to-infinitive | a pufferfish *not said here* |  |  |  | time |  | vn split-23.2 «NP V apart»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **make** | present | pufferfish's size | pufferfish |  |  |  | hard *property* | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset it=Product |
| 4 | **swallow** | to-infinitive | pufferfish *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn hiccup-40.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **is** | present | this |  |  |  |  | tire *property* | tree rules |
| 6 | **be** |  | this *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 7 | **not** **do** | present · do-support | pufferfish | water |  |  |  | for fun | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality |

<!-- .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:9`.

**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): R7-rel-agree ×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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