---
title: The whale shark is the biggest fish in the world, up to about 12 to… — Sharks · tree and pragmatics
description: The whale shark is the biggest fish in the world, up to about 12 to 18 metres, filters plankton and is harmless to people. Who acts: whale shark. A sentence of the lesson «Sharks» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Sharks, sentence 10

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The whale shark is the biggest fish in the world, up to about 12 to 18 metres, filters plankton and is harmless to people.

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**Who acts:** whale shark · **What happens:** be, filter · **To what, where:** biggest fish, world, plankton

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Sharks» 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 (whale shark), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:028-sharks.lesson:10
# text = The whale shark is the biggest fish in the world, up to about 12 to 18 metres, filters plankton and is harmless to people.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 028-sharks.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): R5-strong ×1, R7-rel-agree ×2
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	whale	whale	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
3	shark	shark	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
4	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	biggest	big	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	7	amod	_	_
7	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	world	world	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
12	up	up	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=18:advmod|HaikuPos=ADV:RB:_
13	to	to	ADP	IN	_	12	fixed	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=18:case
14	about	about	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	12	12	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	18	nummod	_	_
16	to	to	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	18	18	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	15	nmod	_	_
18	metres	metre	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl:unmarked	_	_
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
20	filters	filter	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=7:acl:relcl
21	plankton	plankton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obj	_	_
22	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	24	cc	_	_
23	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	24	cop	_	_
24	harmless	harmless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	conj	_	_
25	to	to	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
26	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	24	obl	_	_
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | the whale shark | the biggest fish |  | the world |  | up 12 metres | tree rules |
| 2 | **filter** | present |  | plankton |  |  |  |  | vn wipe\_instr-10.4.2 «NP V NP.initial\_location»: agent=Agent plankton=Initial\_Location |
| 3 | **is** | present |  |  |  |  |  | to people; harmless *property* | tree rules |

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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:028-sharks.lesson:10`.

**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): R5-strong ×1, R7-rel-agree ×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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