--- title: The Australian thorny devil eats thousands of small ants at a meal,… — The desert: living with little water · tree and pragmatics description: The Australian thorny devil eats thousands of small ants at a meal, draws water from damp sand through grooves in its skin to its mouth and shows a spiny false head to predators. Who acts: Australian thorny devil. A sentence of the lesson «The desert: living with little water» of the biology course --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/5-the-desert/15/) [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/) / [The desert: living with little water](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/5-the-desert/) / 15 # The desert: living with little water, sentence 15 The Australian thorny devil eats thousands of small ants at a meal, draws water from damp sand through grooves in its skin to its mouth and shows a spiny false head to predators. **Who acts:** Australian thorny devil · **What happens:** eat, draw, show · **To what, where:** thousands, meal, water, damp sand, spiny false head, predators This is a sentence of the lesson «The desert: living with little water» 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 (Australian thorny devil), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree. ## The tree {#tree} ```conllu # sent_id = school:biology:005-the-desert.lesson:15 # text = The Australian thorny devil eats thousands of small ants at a meal, draws water from damp sand through grooves in its skin to its mouth and shows a spiny false head to predators. # source = school lesson (ours) # course = biology # lesson = 005-the-desert.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 The the DET DT Definite=Def|PronType=Art 4 det _ _ 2 Australian Australian ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 4 amod _ _ 3 thorny thorny ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 4 amod _ _ 4 devil devil NOUN NN Number=Sing 5 nsubj _ _ 5 eats eat VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 0 root _ _ 6 thousands thousand NOUN NNS Number=Plur 5 obj _ _ 7 of of ADP IN _ 9 case _ _ 8 small small ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 9 amod _ _ 9 ants ant NOUN NNS Number=Plur 6 nmod _ _ 10 at at ADP IN _ 12 case _ _ 11 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 12 det _ _ 12 meal meal NOUN NN Number=Sing 5 obl _ _ 13 , , PUNCT , _ 14 punct _ _ 14 draws draw VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 5 conj _ _ 15 water water NOUN NN Number=Sing 14 obj _ _ 16 from from ADP IN _ 18 case _ _ 17 damp damp ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 18 amod _ _ 18 sand sand NOUN NN Number=Sing 14 obl _ _ 19 through through ADP IN _ 20 case _ _ 20 grooves groove NOUN NNS Number=Plur 14 obl _ _ 21 in in ADP IN _ 23 case _ _ 22 its its PRON PRP$ Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs 23 nmod:poss _ _ 23 skin skin NOUN NN Number=Sing 20 nmod _ _ 24 to to ADP IN _ 26 case _ _ 25 its its PRON PRP$ Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs 26 nmod:poss _ _ 26 mouth mouth NOUN NN Number=Sing 14 obl _ _ 27 and and CCONJ CC _ 28 cc _ _ 28 shows show VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 5 conj _ _ 29 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 32 det _ _ 30 spiny spiny ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 32 amod _ _ 31 false false ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 32 amod _ _ 32 head head NOUN NN Number=Sing 28 obj _ _ 33 to to ADP IN _ 34 case _ _ 34 predators predator NOUN NNS Number=Plur 28 obl _ Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=32:nmod 35 . . PUNCT . _ 5 punct _ _ ``` ## Pragmatics {#pragmatics} No stored speech act for this sentence. | # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | **eat** | present | the Australian thorny devil | thousands of small ants | | a meal | | | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thousand=Patient | | 2 | **draw** | present | the Australian thorny devil *not said here* | water | | damp sand | | through grooves in water's skin; to water's mouth | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP PP.initial\_location PP.destination»: agent=Agent water=Theme from sand=Initial\_Location to mouth=Destination | | 3 | **show** | present | the Australian thorny devil *not said here* | a spiny false head | predators | | | | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent head=Topic to predator=Recipient | 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:005-the-desert.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): 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/). - ← previous: [The desert: living with little water, 14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/5-the-desert/14/) - next →: [The desert: living with little water, 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/5-the-desert/16/) - ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/5-the-desert/)