---
title: A turtle's shell is part of its skeleton: its ribs and backbone are… — Turtles and tortoises · tree and pragmatics
description: A turtle's shell is part of its skeleton: its ribs and backbone are joined to the bony plates, so it can never leave its shell. Who acts: shell, turtle. A sentence of the lesson «Turtles and tortoises» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of ever
---

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# Turtles and tortoises, sentence 6

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A turtle's shell is part of its skeleton: its ribs and backbone are joined to the bony plates, so it can never leave its shell.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** shell, turtle · **What happens:** be, join, not leave · **To what, where:** part, ribs, shell

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Turtles and tortoises» 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 (shell, turtle), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:031-turtles-and-tortoises.lesson:6
# text = A turtle's shell is part of its skeleton: its ribs and backbone are joined to the bony plates, so it can never leave its shell.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 031-turtles-and-tortoises.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): R6-punct-agree ×1
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	turtle	turtle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod:poss	_	_
3	's	's	PART	POS	_	2	case	_	_
4	shell	shell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	part	part	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	parataxis	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	skeleton	skeleton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
10	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	12	punct	_	_
11	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	ribs	rib	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj:pass	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	backbone	backbone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	conj	_	_
15	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	aux:pass	_	_
16	joined	join	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
17	to	to	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
19	bony	bony	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	plates	plate	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	obl	_	_
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	26	punct	_	_
22	so	so	ADV	RB	_	26	advmod	_	_
23	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	26	nsubj	_	_
24	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	26	aux	_	_
25	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	26	advmod	_	_
26	leave	leave	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	conj	_	_
27	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	28	nmod:poss	_	_
28	shell	shell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	obj	_	_
29	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=16: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 | **is a** | present | a turtle's shell | part |  |  |  | of turtle's skeleton | tree rules |
| 2 | **join** | present · passive |  | turtle's ribs and backbone |  |  |  | to the bony plates | vn mix-22.1-2-1 «NP V NP PP.co-patient»: subject=Patient to plate=Co-Patient |
| 3 | **not** **leave** | can | turtle | turtle's shell |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent shell=Theme |

<!-- .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:031-turtles-and-tortoises.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): R6-punct-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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