---
title: Giant sequoias are the biggest trees by volume, General Sherman weig… — Plants deeper: the oldest, tallest and strangest… · tree and pragmatics
description: Giant sequoias are the biggest trees by volume, General Sherman weighs about as much as ten blue whales or more, and their thick spongy bark resists fire, which helps their cones open. Who acts: Giant sequoias, General Sherman, thick spongy bark, fire. A sentence of the lesson «Plants deeper: the ol
---

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# Plants deeper: the oldest, tallest and strangest trees, sentence 6

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Giant sequoias are the biggest trees by volume, General Sherman weighs about as much as ten blue whales or more, and their thick spongy bark resists fire, which helps their cones open.

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**Who acts:** Giant sequoias, General Sherman, thick spongy bark, fire · **What happens:** be, weigh, resist, help · **To what, where:** biggest trees, fire, cones

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Plants deeper: the oldest, tallest and strangest trees» 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 (Giant sequoias, General Sherman, thick spongy bark, fire), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees.lesson:6
# text = Giant sequoias are the biggest trees by volume, General Sherman weighs about as much as ten blue whales or more, and their thick spongy bark resists fire, which helps their cones open.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees.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): R1-cc-next ×2
1	Giant	giant	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	sequoias	sequoia	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	biggest	big	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	6	amod	_	_
6	trees	tree	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	_
7	by	by	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	volume	volume	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	General	General	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
11	Sherman	Sherman	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	weighs	weigh	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
13	about	about	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
14	as	as	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
16	as	as	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
17	ten	ten	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	19	nummod	_	_
18	blue	blue	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	whales	whale	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obl	_	_
20	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	Agree=R1-cc-next|Haiku=19:cc
21	more	more	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	19	conj	_	_
22	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	28	punct	_	_
23	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	28	cc	_	Agree=R1-cc-next|Haiku=12:cc
24	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	27	nmod:poss	_	_
25	thick	thick	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	amod	_	_
26	spongy	spongy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	amod	_	_
27	bark	bark	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	28	nsubj	_	_
28	resists	resist	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	conj	_	_
29	fire	fire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	28	obj	_	_
30	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	32	punct	_	_
31	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	32	nsubj	_	_
32	helps	help	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	29	acl:relcl	_	_
33	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	34	nmod:poss	_	_
34	cones	cone	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	32	obj	_	_
35	open	open	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	32	xcomp	_	_
36	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	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 | Giant sequoias | the biggest trees |  |  |  | by volume | tree rules |
| 2 | **weigh** | present | General Sherman |  |  |  |  |  | vn register-54.1-2-1 «NP V NP.value»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **resist** | present | sequoias's thick spongy bark | fire |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **help** | present | fire | sequoias's cones |  |  |  | open *property* | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent cone=Beneficiary |

<!-- .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:253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees.lesson:6`.

**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): R1-cc-next ×2. **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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- ← previous: [Plants deeper: the oldest, tallest and…, 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/5/)
- next →: [Plants deeper: the oldest, tallest and…, 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/253-plants-deeper-the-oldest-tallest-and-strangest-trees/7/)
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