---
title: Owls swallow mice whole and cough up the fur and bones as a pellet,… — Birds of prey and owls · tree and pragmatics
description: Owls swallow mice whole and cough up the fur and bones as a pellet, which is why a class can rebuild a whole vole skeleton with tweezers. Who acts: Owls, class. A sentence of the lesson «Birds of prey and owls» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatic
---

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# Birds of prey and owls, sentence 3

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Owls swallow mice whole and cough up the fur and bones as a pellet, which is why a class can rebuild a whole vole skeleton with tweezers.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Owls, class · **What happens:** swallow, cough up, be, rebuild · **To what, where:** mice, fur, whole vole skeleton

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

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:034-birds-of-prey-and-owls.lesson:3
# text = Owls swallow mice whole and cough up the fur and bones as a pellet, which is why a class can rebuild a whole vole skeleton with tweezers.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 034-birds-of-prey-and-owls.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, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	Owls	owl	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
2	swallow	swallow	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	mice	mouse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
4	whole	whole	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	xcomp	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=3:amod
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	cough	cough	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=2:conj|HaikuPos=VERB:VB:VerbForm=Inf
7	up	up	ADP	RP	_	6	compound:prt	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	fur	fur	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	bones	bone	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	conj	_	_
12	as	as	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	pellet	pellet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
16	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	18	nsubj	_	_
17	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
18	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	22	advmod	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	class	class	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	nsubj	_	_
21	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	22	aux	_	_
22	rebuild	rebuild	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	acl:relcl	_	_
23	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	26	det	_	_
24	whole	whole	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	26	amod	_	_
25	vole	vole	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	compound	_	_
26	skeleton	skeleton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	obj	_	_
27	with	with	ADP	IN	_	28	case	_	_
28	tweezers	tweezer	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	22	obl	_	_
29	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **swallow** | present | Owls | mice |  |  |  | whole *property* | vn gobble-39.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent mouse=Patient |
| 2 | **cough up** | present | Owls *not said here* | the fur and bones |  |  |  | as a pellet | vn breathe-40.1.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fur=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | present |  |  |  |  |  | why *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **rebuild** | can | a class | a whole vole skeleton |  |  |  | with tweezers | vn create-26.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent skeleton=Result |

<!-- .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:034-birds-of-prey-and-owls.lesson:3`.

**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, 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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