---
title: Around 1799 the naturalist George Shaw checked the first platypus sk… — The platypus and the echidna: mammals that lay e… · tree and pragmatics
description: Around 1799 the naturalist George Shaw checked the first platypus skin for stitches, and egg-laying was finally proved only in 1884. Who acts: naturalist George Shaw. A sentence of the lesson «The platypus and the echidna: mammals that lay eggs» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with it
---

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# The platypus and the echidna: mammals that lay eggs, sentence 10

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Around 1799 the naturalist George Shaw checked the first platypus skin for stitches, and egg-laying was finally proved only in 1884.

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**Who acts:** naturalist George Shaw · **What happens:** check, lay, prove · **To what, where:** first platypus skin, 1799, 1884

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This is a sentence of the lesson «The platypus and the echidna: mammals that lay eggs» 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 (naturalist George Shaw), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:043-platypus-and-echidna.lesson:10
# text = Around 1799 the naturalist George Shaw checked the first platypus skin for stitches, and egg-laying was finally proved only in 1884.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 043-platypus-and-echidna.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): no change
1	Around	around	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	1799	1799	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	7	obl	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	naturalist	naturalist	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	_
5	George	George	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	_
6	Shaw	Shaw	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	checked	check	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
9	first	first	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	11	amod	_	_
10	platypus	platypus	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
11	skin	skin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
12	for	for	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	stitches	stitch	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
16	egg	egg	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	compound	_	_
17	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	16	punct	_	_
18	laying	lay	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	21	nsubj:pass	_	_
19	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	aux:pass	_	_
20	finally	finally	ADV	RB	_	21	advmod	_	_
21	proved	prove	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	7	conj	_	_
22	only	only	ADV	RB	_	24	advmod	_	_
23	in	in	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
24	1884	1884	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	21	obl	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- 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 | **check** | past | the naturalist George Shaw | the first platypus skin |  | 1799 |  | for stitches | vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Agent skin=Theme for stitch=Attribute |
| 2 | **lay** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn create-26.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **prove** | past · passive |  |  |  | 1884 |  | finally *property* | vn deduce-97.2 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme |

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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:043-platypus-and-echidna.lesson:10`.

**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): no change. **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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