---
title: The Chinese character for the eighth animal can mean goat, sheep or… — The Chinese zodiac: the twelve real animals behi… · tree and pragmatics
description: The Chinese character for the eighth animal can mean goat, sheep or ram, so both are right. Who acts: Chinese character, both. A sentence of the lesson «The Chinese zodiac: the twelve real animals behind the signs» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragm
---

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# The Chinese zodiac: the twelve real animals behind the signs, sentence 15

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The Chinese character for the eighth animal can mean goat, sheep or ram, so both are right.

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**Who acts:** Chinese character, both · **What happens:** mean, be · **To what, where:** goat

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This is a sentence of the lesson «The Chinese zodiac: the twelve real animals behind the signs» 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 (Chinese character, both), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:382-the-chinese-zodiac-the-twelve-real-animals-behind-the-signs.lesson:15
# text = The Chinese character for the eighth animal can mean goat, sheep or ram, so both are right.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 382-the-chinese-zodiac-the-twelve-real-animals-behind-the-signs.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, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	Chinese	Chinese	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	character	character	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
4	for	for	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	eighth	eighth	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	animal	animal	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
8	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	mean	mean	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
10	goat	goat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
12	sheep	sheep	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	conj	_	_
13	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	ram	ram	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	conj	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
16	so	so	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
17	both	both	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	19	nsubj	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=19:nsubj|HaikuPos=PRON:DT:PronType=Tot
18	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
19	right	right	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=9:conj
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	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 | **mean** | can | the Chinese character for the eighth animal | goat and sheep or ram |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent goat=Topic |
| 2 | **is** | present | both |  |  |  |  | right *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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:382-the-chinese-zodiac-the-twelve-real-animals-behind-the-signs.lesson:15`.

**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, 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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