---
title: City birds often sing higher, louder or at quieter times like night… — City birds: sparrows, starlings, swifts, crows a… · tree and pragmatics
description: City birds often sing higher, louder or at quieter times like night to be heard over traffic; city great tits sing higher notes than forest ones, and in San Francisco birds sang more softly in the quiet lockdown. Who acts: City birds, city great tits, San birds. A sentence of the lesson «City birds:
---

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# City birds: sparrows, starlings, swifts, crows and peregrines on tall buildings, sentence 16

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City birds often sing higher, louder or at quieter times like night to be heard over traffic; city great tits sing higher notes than forest ones, and in San Francisco birds sang more softly in the quiet lockdown.

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**Who acts:** City birds, city great tits, San birds · **What happens:** sing, hear · **To what, where:** traffic, higher notes, quiet lockdown

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This is a sentence of the lesson «City birds: sparrows, starlings, swifts, crows and peregrines on tall buildings» 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 (City birds, city great tits, San birds), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:369-city-birds-sparrows-starlings-swifts-crows-and-peregrines-on-tall-buildings.lesson:16
# text = City birds often sing higher, louder or at quieter times like night to be heard over traffic; city great tits sing higher notes than forest ones, and in San Francisco birds sang more softly in the quiet lockdown.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 369-city-birds-sparrows-starlings-swifts-crows-and-peregrines-on-tall-buildings.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, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	City	city	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	compound	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=2:amod
2	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	_
3	often	often	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	sing	sing	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	2	acl	_	_
5	higher	high	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	4	advmod	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	louder	loud	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	5	conj	_	_
8	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	at	at	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	quieter	quiet	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	11	amod	_	_
11	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	_
12	like	like	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
15	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	aux:pass	_	_
16	heard	hear	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	13	acl	_	_
17	over	over	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	traffic	traffic	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	_
19	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
20	city	city	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	compound	_	_
21	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=20:amod
22	tits	tit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	conj	_	_
23	sing	sing	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	22	acl	_	_
24	higher	high	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	25	amod	_	_
25	notes	note	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	23	obj	_	_
26	than	than	ADP	IN	_	28	case	_	_
27	forest	forest	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	28	compound	_	_
28	ones	one	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	25	nmod	_	_
29	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	35	punct	_	_
30	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	35	cc	_	_
31	in	in	ADP	IN	_	34	case	_	_
32	San	San	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	34	compound	_	_
33	Francisco	Francisco	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	32	flat	_	_
34	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	35	nsubj	_	_
35	sang	sing	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	23	conj	_	_
36	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	37	advmod	_	_
37	softly	softly	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	35	advmod	_	_
38	in	in	ADP	IN	_	41	case	_	_
39	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	41	det	_	_
40	quiet	quiet	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	41	amod	_	_
41	lockdown	lockdown	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	35	obl	_	_
42	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	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 | **sing** *speech: express* | gerund | City birds and city great tits *not said here* |  |  |  |  | high, often *property* | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **hear** | to-infinitive · passive | City birds and city great tits *not said here* |  |  | traffic |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V PP.stimulus» |
| 3 | **sing** *speech: express* | gerund | city great tits *not said here* | higher notes |  |  |  | than forest ones | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location note=Theme |
| 4 | **sing** *speech: express* | past | San birds |  |  | the quiet lockdown |  | softly *property* | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in lockdown=Location |

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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:369-city-birds-sparrows-starlings-swifts-crows-and-peregrines-on-tall-buildings.lesson:16`.

**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, R7-rel-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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- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/369-city-birds-sparrows-starlings-swifts-crows-and-peregrines-on-tall-buildings/)