---
title: A mule is the young of a donkey father and a horse mother; it is str… — Horses, zebras and donkeys · tree and pragmatics
description: A mule is the young of a donkey father and a horse mother; it is strong and sure-footed but almost never has young of its own. Who acts: mule. 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 cla
---

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# Horses, zebras and donkeys, sentence 16

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A mule is the young of a donkey father and a horse mother; it is strong and sure-footed but almost never has young of its own.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** mule · **What happens:** be, not have · **To what, where:** young

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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 (mule), 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:16
# text = A mule is the young of a donkey father and a horse mother; it is strong and sure-footed but almost never has young of its own.
# 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, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	mule	mule	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	young	young	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	donkey	donkey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
9	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=5:obl
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	_
13	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	conj	_	_
14	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	17	punct	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
16	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
17	strong	strong	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	parataxis	_	_
18	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
19	sure	sure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	conj	_	_
20	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	19	punct	_	_
21	footed	foot	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	conj	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=17:conj|HaikuPos=VERB:VBN:Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass
22	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	25	cc	_	_
23	almost	almost	ADV	RB	_	24	advmod	_	_
24	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	25	advmod	_	_
25	has	have	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
26	young	young	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	obj	_	_
27	of	of	ADP	IN	_	29	case	_	_
28	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	29	nmod:poss	_	_
29	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	26	nmod	_	_
30	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	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 | **is a** | present | a mule | the young |  |  |  | of a donkey father and a horse mother | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | present | mule |  |  |  |  | strong *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **be** |  | mule *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **be** |  | mule *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 5 | **not** **have** | present | a mule *not said here* | young of mule's own |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent young=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:025-horses-zebras-and-donkeys.lesson:16`.

**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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- next →: [Horses, zebras and donkeys, 17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/25-horses-zebras-and-donkeys/17/)
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