--- title: Tens of thousands of starlings fly together before roosting in shape… — City birds: sparrows, starlings, swifts, crows a… · tree and pragmatics description: Tens of thousands of starlings fly together before roosting in shapes called murmurations; each bird watches about 7 nearest neighbours, and a falcon finds it hard to pick one bird out. Who acts: Tens, shapes, bird, falcon. A sentence of the lesson «City birds: sparrows, starlings, swifts, crows and --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/369-city-birds-sparrows-starlings-swifts-crows-and-peregrines-on-tall-buildings/7/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / [City birds: sparrows, starlings, swift…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/369-city-birds-sparrows-starlings-swifts-crows-and-peregrines-on-tall-buildings/) / 7 # City birds: sparrows, starlings, swifts, crows and peregrines on tall buildings, sentence 7 Tens of thousands of starlings fly together before roosting in shapes called murmurations; each bird watches about 7 nearest neighbours, and a falcon finds it hard to pick one bird out. **Who acts:** Tens, shapes, bird, falcon · **What happens:** fly, roost, call, watch, find, pick out · **To what, where:** shapes, murmurations, 7 nearest neighbours, one bird · **Speech:** someone speaks here 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 (Tens, shapes, bird, falcon), 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:7 # text = Tens of thousands of starlings fly together before roosting in shapes called murmurations; each bird watches about 7 nearest neighbours, and a falcon finds it hard to pick one bird out. # 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): R7-rel-agree ×1 1 Tens ten NOUN NNS Number=Plur 6 nsubj _ _ 2 of of ADP IN _ 3 case _ _ 3 thousands thousand NOUN NNS Number=Plur 1 nmod _ _ 4 of of ADP IN _ 5 case _ _ 5 starlings starling NOUN NNS Number=Plur 3 nmod _ _ 6 fly fly VERB VBP Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 0 root _ _ 7 together together ADV RB _ 6 advmod _ _ 8 before before SCONJ IN _ 9 mark _ _ 9 roosting roost VERB VBG Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part 6 advcl _ _ 10 in in ADP IN _ 11 case _ _ 11 shapes shape NOUN NNS Number=Plur 9 obl _ _ 12 called call VERB VBN Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass 11 acl _ _ 13 murmurations murmuration NOUN NNS Number=Plur 12 xcomp _ _ 14 ; ; PUNCT , _ 17 punct _ _ 15 each each DET DT PronType=Tot 16 det _ _ 16 bird bird NOUN NN Number=Sing 17 nsubj _ _ 17 watches watch VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 6 parataxis _ _ 18 about about ADV RB _ 19 advmod _ _ 19 7 7 NUM CD NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card 21 nummod _ _ 20 nearest near ADJ JJS Degree=Sup 21 amod _ _ 21 neighbours neighbour NOUN NNS Number=Plur 17 obj _ _ 22 , , PUNCT , _ 26 punct _ _ 23 and and CCONJ CC _ 26 cc _ _ 24 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 25 det _ _ 25 falcon falcon NOUN NN Number=Sing 26 nsubj _ _ 26 finds find VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 17 conj _ _ 27 it it PRON PRP Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs 28 expl _ _ 28 hard hard ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 26 xcomp _ _ 29 to to PART TO _ 30 mark _ _ 30 pick pick VERB VB VerbForm=Inf 28 advcl _ _ 31 one one NUM CD NumForm=Word|NumType=Card 32 nummod _ _ 32 bird bird NOUN NN Number=Sing 30 obj _ _ 33 out out ADP RP _ 30 compound:prt _ Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=30:advmod|HaikuPos=ADV:RB:_ 34 . . PUNCT . _ 6 punct _ _ ``` ## Pragmatics {#pragmatics} No stored speech act for this sentence. | # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | **fly** | present | Tens of thousands of starlings | | | | | together *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | | 2 | **roost** | gerund | Tens of thousands of starlings *not said here* | | | shapes | | | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in shape=Location | | 3 | **call** | participle | shapes *not said here* | murmurations | | | | | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | | 4 | **watch** | present | each bird | 7 nearest neighbours | | | | | vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent neighbour=Theme | | 5 | **find** | present | a falcon | | | | | hard *property* | vn declare-29.4-1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent | | 6 | **pick out** | to-infinitive | a falcon *not said here* | one bird | | | | | vn chew-39.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bird=Patient | 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. **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:7`. **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): 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/). - ← previous: [City birds: sparrows, starlings, swift…, 6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/369-city-birds-sparrows-starlings-swifts-crows-and-peregrines-on-tall-buildings/6/) - next →: [City birds: sparrows, starlings, swift…, 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/369-city-birds-sparrows-starlings-swifts-crows-and-peregrines-on-tall-buildings/8/) - ↑ 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/)