---
title: In the death roll a crocodile spins in the water to tear chunks off… — Crocodiles and alligators · tree and pragmatics
description: In the death roll a crocodile spins in the water to tear chunks off its prey, because it can't chew. Who acts: crocodile, prey. A sentence of the lesson «Crocodiles and alligators» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Crocodiles and alligators, sentence 14

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In the death roll a crocodile spins in the water to tear chunks off its prey, because it can't chew.

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**Who acts:** crocodile, prey · **What happens:** spin, tear, not chew · **To what, where:** death roll, chunks

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Crocodiles and alligators» 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 (crocodile, prey), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:029-crocodiles-and-alligators.lesson:14
# text = In the death roll a crocodile spins in the water to tear chunks off its prey, because it can't chew.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 029-crocodiles-and-alligators.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	In	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	roll	roll	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	crocodile	crocodile	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	spins	spin	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	tear	tear	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	advcl	_	_
13	chunks	chunk	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obj	_	_
14	off	off	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	prey	prey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	_
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
18	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	22	mark	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	nsubj	_	_
20	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	22	aux	_	_
21	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	22	advmod	_	_
22	chew	chew	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	advcl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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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 | **spin** | present | a crocodile |  |  | the death roll |  | in the water | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V PP.source PP.trajectory PP.destination»: agent=Theme in roll=Source in water=Trajectory |
| 2 | **tear** | to-infinitive | a crocodile *not said here* | chunks |  |  |  | off water's prey | vn split-23.2 «NP V NP PP.co-patient»: agent=Agent chunk=Patient off prey=Co-Patient |
| 3 | **not** **chew** | can | prey |  |  |  |  |  | vn chew-39.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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:029-crocodiles-and-alligators.lesson:14`.

**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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