---
title: Dolphins sleep with half of their brain at a time, switching sides,… — Dolphins, porpoises and seals · tree and pragmatics
description: Dolphins sleep with half of their brain at a time, switching sides, so they can keep coming up to breathe. Who acts: Dolphins, things. A sentence of the lesson «Dolphins, porpoises and seals» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Dolphins, porpoises and seals, sentence 7

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Dolphins sleep with half of their brain at a time, switching sides, so they can keep coming up to breathe.

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**Who acts:** Dolphins, things · **What happens:** sleep, switch, keep, come up, breathe

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Dolphins, porpoises and seals» 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 (Dolphins, things), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:027-dolphins-porpoises-and-seals.lesson:7
# text = Dolphins sleep with half of their brain at a time, switching sides, so they can keep coming up to breathe.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 027-dolphins-porpoises-and-seals.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): no change
1	Dolphins	dolphin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sleep	sleep	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	with	with	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	half	half	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing|NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	2	obl	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	brain	brain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	_
8	at	at	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	switching	switch	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	13	amod	_	_
13	sides	side	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	conj	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
15	so	so	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
16	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
17	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
18	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
19	coming	come	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	18	xcomp	_	_
20	up	up	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
21	to	to	PART	TO	_	22	mark	_	_
22	breathe	breathe	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	19	advcl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
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 | **sleep** | present | Dolphins |  |  |  |  | with half of things's brain at a time and switching sides | vn snooze-40.4-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **switch** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn convert-26.6.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **keep** | can | things *= thing* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **come up** | gerund | things *= thing* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **breathe** | to-infinitive | things *= thing* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn breathe-40.1.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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:027-dolphins-porpoises-and-seals.lesson:7`.

**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): no change. **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 →: [Dolphins, porpoises and seals, 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/27-dolphins-porpoises-and-seals/8/)
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