---
title: Stand on a bridge at dusk in winter and watch a cloud of starlings t… — City birds: sparrows, starlings, swifts, crows a… · tree and pragmatics
description: Stand on a bridge at dusk in winter and watch a cloud of starlings twist like smoke: no bird is in charge, each one just copies the few birds closest to it. Who acts: you, cloud, bird, one. A sentence of the lesson «City birds: sparrows, starlings, swifts, crows and peregrines on tall buildings» of 
---

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# City birds: sparrows, starlings, swifts, crows and peregrines on tall buildings, sentence 2

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Stand on a bridge at dusk in winter and watch a cloud of starlings twist like smoke: no bird is in charge, each one just copies the few birds closest to it.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you, cloud, bird, one · **What happens:** stand, watch, twist, be, copy, cloud · **To what, where:** bridge, cloud, charge, few birds, starlings

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (you, cloud, bird, one), 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:2
# text = Stand on a bridge at dusk in winter and watch a cloud of starlings twist like smoke: no bird is in charge, each one just copies the few birds closest to it.
# 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	Stand	stand	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
2	on	on	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	bridge	bridge	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
5	at	at	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	dusk	dusk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
7	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	winter	winter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=6:nmod
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	watch	watch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	conj	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	cloud	cloud	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	starlings	starling	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nmod	_	_
15	twist	twist	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	acl	_	_
16	like	like	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	smoke	smoke	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	_
18	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	1	punct	_	_
19	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	20	det	_	_
20	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	nsubj	_	_
21	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	23	cop	_	_
22	in	in	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
23	charge	charge	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	parataxis	_	_
24	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	28	punct	_	_
25	each	each	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	26	det	_	_
26	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	28	nsubj	_	_
27	just	just	ADV	RB	_	28	advmod	_	_
28	copies	copy	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	23	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=23:conj
29	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	31	det	_	_
30	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	31	amod	_	_
31	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	28	obj	_	_
32	closest	close	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	31	amod	_	_
33	to	to	ADP	IN	_	34	case	_	_
34	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	32	obl	_	_
35	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: command
- act: request
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  | a bridge | dusk; winter |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on bridge=Location |
| 2 | **watch** | infinitive | you *not said here* | a cloud of starlings |  |  |  |  | vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent cloud=Theme |
| 3 | **twist** | infinitive | a cloud of starlings *not said here* |  |  |  |  | like smoke | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **is** | present | no bird |  |  | charge |  |  | tree rules |
| 5 | **copy** | present | each one | the few birds |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bird=Theme |
| 6 | **cloud** |  |  | starlings |  |  |  |  | nom cloud «phenomenon transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .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:369-city-birds-sparrows-starlings-swifts-crows-and-peregrines-on-tall-buildings.lesson:2`.

**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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- ← previous: [City birds: sparrows, starlings, swift…, 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/369-city-birds-sparrows-starlings-swifts-crows-and-peregrines-on-tall-buildings/1/)
- next →: [City birds: sparrows, starlings, swift…, 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/369-city-birds-sparrows-starlings-swifts-crows-and-peregrines-on-tall-buildings/3/)
- ↑ 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/)