---
title: Zebras have black skin, so they are usually described as black with… — Horses, zebras and donkeys · tree and pragmatics
description: Zebras have black skin, so they are usually described as black with white stripes. Who acts: Zebras. A sentence of the lesson «Horses, zebras and donkeys» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Horses, zebras and donkeys, sentence 12

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Zebras have black skin, so they are usually described as black with white stripes.

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**Who acts:** Zebras · **What happens:** have, describe · **To what, where:** black skin, zebra

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Horses, zebras and donkeys» 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 (Zebras), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:025-horses-zebras-and-donkeys.lesson:12
# text = Zebras have black skin, so they are usually described as black with white stripes.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 025-horses-zebras-and-donkeys.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
1	Zebras	zebra	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
2	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	skin	skin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
6	so	so	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
7	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj:pass	_	_
8	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux:pass	_	_
9	usually	usually	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	described	describe	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=2:conj
11	as	as	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	obl	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	stripes	stripe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obl	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	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 | **have** | present | Zebras | black skin |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent skin=Patient |
| 2 | **describe** | present · passive |  | zebra |  |  |  | as black; usually *property* | vn characterize-29.2-1-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: subject=Theme as black=Attribute |

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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:025-horses-zebras-and-donkeys.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): R7-rel-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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