---
title: Blue tits time their chicks to hatch when caterpillars are most comm… — Food chains: sun, plants, plant-eaters, meat-eat… · tree and pragmatics
description: Blue tits time their chicks to hatch when caterpillars are most common, and one family can eat thousands of caterpillars, often quoted as about 10,000. Who acts: Blue tits, caterpillars, one family. A sentence of the lesson «Food chains: sun, plants, plant-eaters, meat-eaters» of the biology course 
---

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# Food chains: sun, plants, plant-eaters, meat-eaters, sentence 10

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Blue tits time their chicks to hatch when caterpillars are most common, and one family can eat thousands of caterpillars, often quoted as about 10,000.

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**Who acts:** Blue tits, caterpillars, one family · **What happens:** time, hatch, be, eat, quote · **To what, where:** chicks, thousands

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Food chains: sun, plants, plant-eaters, meat-eaters» 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 (Blue tits, caterpillars, one family), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:046-food-chains.lesson:10
# text = Blue tits time their chicks to hatch when caterpillars are most common, and one family can eat thousands of caterpillars, often quoted as about 10,000.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 046-food-chains.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
1	Blue	blue	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	tits	tit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	time	time	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	chicks	chick	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	hatch	hatch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
8	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	12	advmod	_	_
9	caterpillars	caterpillar	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	_
10	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
11	most	most	ADV	RBS	Degree=Sup	12	advmod	_	_
12	common	common	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	advcl	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
15	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	16	nummod	_	_
16	family	family	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
17	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
18	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=12:parataxis
19	thousands	thousand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	obj	_	_
20	of	of	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	caterpillars	caterpillar	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	nmod	_	_
22	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
23	often	often	ADV	RB	_	24	advmod	_	_
24	quoted	quote	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	18	advcl	_	_
25	as	as	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
26	about	about	ADV	RB	_	27	advmod	_	_
27	10,000	10000	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	24	obl	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **time** | present | Blue tits | tits's chicks |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **hatch** | to-infinitive | Blue tits *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn grow-26.2.1 «NP.patient V PP.product»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **is** | present | caterpillars |  |  |  |  | common *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **eat** | can | one family | thousands of caterpillars |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thousand=Patient |
| 5 | **quote** *speech: other* | participle | one family *not said here* |  |  |  |  | as 10,000; often *property* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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:046-food-chains.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): R5-strong ×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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