---
title: In the 1800s billions of passenger pigeons darkened the skies of Nor… — Extinct forever: the dodo, the passenger pigeon,… · tree and pragmatics
description: In the 1800s billions of passenger pigeons darkened the skies of North America; mass hunting and forest cutting killed them all, and the last one, Martha, died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. Who acts: passenger pigeons, mass hunting, last one. A sentence of the lesson «Extinct forever: the dodo, the pas
---

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# Extinct forever: the dodo, the passenger pigeon, the thylacine and more, sentence 6

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In the 1800s billions of passenger pigeons darkened the skies of North America; mass hunting and forest cutting killed them all, and the last one, Martha, died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

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**Who acts:** passenger pigeons, mass hunting, last one · **What happens:** darken, kill, die · **To what, where:** 1800s, skies, billions

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Extinct forever: the dodo, the passenger pigeon, the thylacine and more» 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 (passenger pigeons, mass hunting, last one), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more.lesson:6
# text = In the 1800s billions of passenger pigeons darkened the skies of North America; mass hunting and forest cutting killed them all, and the last one, Martha, died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more.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 ×2, R7-rel-agree ×1, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=4:det
3	1800s	1800	NOUN	NNS	Number=Ptan|NumForm=Combi|NumType=Card	8	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=4:compound
4	billions	billion	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obl	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	passenger	passenger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	_
7	pigeons	pigeon	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nmod	_	_
8	darkened	darken	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	7	acl	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	skies	sky	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	North	North	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	_
13	America	America	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	_
14	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	20	punct	_	_
15	mass	mass	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=16:compound|HaikuPos=NOUN:NN:Number=Sing
16	hunting	hunting	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nsubj	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
18	forest	forest	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	compound	_	_
19	cutting	cutting	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	conj	_	_
20	killed	kill	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
21	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	obj	_	_
22	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	21	nmod:unmarked	_	_
23	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	31	punct	_	_
24	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	31	cc	_	_
25	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	27	det	_	_
26	last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	amod	_	_
27	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	31	nsubj	_	_
28	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
29	Martha	Martha	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	27	appos	_	_
30	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
31	died	die	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	20	conj	_	_
32	in	in	ADP	IN	_	34	case	_	_
33	Cincinnati	Cincinnati	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	34	compound	_	_
34	Zoo	Zoo	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	31	obl	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=31:obl|HaikuPos=NOUN:NN:Number=Sing
35	in	in	ADP	IN	_	36	case	_	_
36	1914	1914	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	31	obl	_	_
37	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	20	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 | **darken** | participle | passenger pigeons *not said here* | the 1800s |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent sky=Patient |
| 2 | **kill** | past | mass hunting and forest cutting | skies *= sky* |  | billions of passenger pigeons |  |  | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme |
| 3 | **die** | past | the last one |  |  |  |  | in 1914; in Cincinnati Zoo | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.patient V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient in zoo=Attribute |

<!-- .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:281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more.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): R5-strong ×2, 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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- ← previous: [Extinct forever: the dodo, the passeng…, 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/5/)
- next →: [Extinct forever: the dodo, the passeng…, 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/7/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/281-extinct-forever-the-dodo-the-passenger-pigeon-the-thylacine-and-more/)