---
title: House mice leave droppings like grains of rice and gnaw holes in pac… — Pests: mice in the kitchen, cockroaches, clothes… · tree and pragmatics
description: House mice leave droppings like grains of rice and gnaw holes in packets when they move in for food and warmth; their teeth never stop growing, so they gnaw almost anything, even wires. Who acts: House mice, droppings, teeth. A sentence of the lesson «Pests: mice in the kitchen, cockroaches, clothes
---

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# Pests: mice in the kitchen, cockroaches, clothes moths, fleas and head lice, sentence 8

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House mice leave droppings like grains of rice and gnaw holes in packets when they move in for food and warmth; their teeth never stop growing, so they gnaw almost anything, even wires.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** House mice, droppings, teeth · **What happens:** leave, gnaw, move in, not stop, grow · **To what, where:** droppings, holes, packets, anything

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Pests: mice in the kitchen, cockroaches, clothes moths, fleas and head lice» 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 (House mice, droppings, teeth), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:397-pests-mice-in-the-kitchen-cockroaches-clothes-moths-fleas-and-head-lice.lesson:8
# text = House mice leave droppings like grains of rice and gnaw holes in packets when they move in for food and warmth; their teeth never stop growing, so they gnaw almost anything, even wires.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 397-pests-mice-in-the-kitchen-cockroaches-clothes-moths-fleas-and-head-lice.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 ×3
1	House	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	compound	_	_
2	mice	mouse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	leave	leave	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	droppings	dropping	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
5	like	like	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	grains	grain	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nmod	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	rice	rice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	gnaw	gnaw	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
11	holes	hole	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	packets	packet	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	_
14	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	16	advmod	_	_
15	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	move	move	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	advcl	_	_
17	in	in	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=16:compound:prt|HaikuPos=ADP:RP:_
18	for	for	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	food	food	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
21	warmth	warmth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	conj	_	_
22	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	26	punct	_	_
23	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	24	nmod:poss	_	_
24	teeth	tooth	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	26	nsubj	_	_
25	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	26	advmod	_	_
26	stop	stop	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	parataxis	_	_
27	growing	grow	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	26	xcomp	_	_
28	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	31	punct	_	_
29	so	so	ADV	RB	_	31	advmod	_	_
30	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	31	nsubj	_	_
31	gnaw	gnaw	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=3:conj
32	almost	almost	ADV	RB	_	33	advmod	_	_
33	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	31	obj	_	_
34	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	36	punct	_	_
35	even	even	ADV	RB	_	36	advmod	_	_
36	wires	wire	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	33	appos	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=33:conj
37	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	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 | **leave** | present | House mice | droppings |  |  |  | like grains of rice | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dropping=Theme |
| 2 | **gnaw** | infinitive | House mice *not said here* | holes |  | packets |  |  | vn chew-39.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hole=Patient |
| 3 | **move in** | present | droppings *= dropping* |  |  |  |  | for food and warmth | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **not** **stop** | present | droppings's teeth |  |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Affector clause=Eventuality |
| 5 | **grow** | gerund | droppings's teeth *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 6 | **gnaw** | present | teeth *= tooth* | anything |  |  |  |  | vn chew-39.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent anything=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:397-pests-mice-in-the-kitchen-cockroaches-clothes-moths-fleas-and-head-lice.lesson:8`.

**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 ×3. **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: [Pests: mice in the kitchen, cockroache…, 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/397-pests-mice-in-the-kitchen-cockroaches-clothes-moths-fleas-and-head-lice/7/)
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