---
title: Porcupines cannot shoot their quills; the quills come off easily whe… — Animal myths put right: elephants and mice, lemm… · tree and pragmatics
description: Porcupines cannot shoot their quills; the quills come off easily when touched and stick into the attacker, and a porcupine rattles its quills and stamps its feet as a warning first. Who acts: Porcupines, quills, porcupine. A sentence of the lesson «Animal myths put right: elephants and mice, lemming
---

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# Animal myths put right: elephants and mice, lemmings, ostriches and goldfish, sentence 11

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Porcupines cannot shoot their quills; the quills come off easily when touched and stick into the attacker, and a porcupine rattles its quills and stamps its feet as a warning first.

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**Who acts:** Porcupines, quills, porcupine · **What happens:** not shoot, come off, touch, stick, rattle, stamp · **To what, where:** quills, attacker, feet

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Animal myths put right: elephants and mice, lemmings, ostriches and goldfish» 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 (Porcupines, quills, porcupine), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish.lesson:11
# text = Porcupines cannot shoot their quills; the quills come off easily when touched and stick into the attacker, and a porcupine rattles its quills and stamps its feet as a warning first.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish.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): R2-punct-next ×1, R3-conj-first ×1, R5-strong ×1, R7-rel-agree ×2
1	Porcupines	porcupine	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
2	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	shoot	shoot	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	quills	quill	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
7	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	quills	quill	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
10	come	come	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:conj|HaikuPos=VERB:VB:VerbForm=Inf
11	off	off	ADV	RB	_	10	compound:prt	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=10:advmod
12	easily	easily	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=14:advmod
13	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	14	advmod	_	_
14	touched	touch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	advcl	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
16	stick	stick	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	conj	_	_
17	into	into	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	attacker	attacker	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	_
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	Agree=R2-punct-next|Haiku=10:punct
21	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	24	cc	_	_
22	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	porcupine	porcupine	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	nsubj	_	_
24	rattles	rattle	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	Agree=R3-conj-first|Haiku=10:conj
25	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	26	nmod:poss	_	_
26	quills	quill	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	24	obj	_	_
27	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	28	cc	_	_
28	stamps	stamp	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	24	conj	_	_
29	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	30	nmod:poss	_	_
30	feet	foot	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	28	obj	_	_
31	as	as	ADP	IN	_	33	case	_	_
32	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	33	det	_	_
33	warning	warning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	28	obl	_	_
34	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	28	advmod	_	_
35	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- 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 | **not** **shoot** | can | Porcupines | Porcupines's quills |  |  |  |  | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent quill=Theme |
| 2 | **come off** | present | the quills |  |  |  |  | easily *property* | vn occur-48.3-2 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **touch** | participle | the quills *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **stick** | infinitive | the quills *not said here* |  |  | the attacker |  |  | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V PP.destination»: agent=Theme into attacker=Destination |
| 5 | **rattle** | present | a porcupine | attacker's quills |  |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent quill=Theme |
| 6 | **stamp** | present | a porcupine *not said here* | attacker's feet |  |  |  | as a warning; first *property* | vn characterize-29.2 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent foot=Theme as warning=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:295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish.lesson:11`.

**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): R2-punct-next ×1, R3-conj-first ×1, 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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