---
title: Deserts are defined by very little rain, not by heat, so they can dr… — The desert: living with little water · tree and pragmatics
description: Deserts are defined by very little rain, not by heat, so they can drop below freezing at night, and Antarctica is the biggest desert on Earth. Who acts: little rain, km, Antarctica. A sentence of the lesson «The desert: living with little water» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with it
---

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# The desert: living with little water, sentence 18

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Deserts are defined by very little rain, not by heat, so they can drop below freezing at night, and Antarctica is the biggest desert on Earth.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** little rain, km, Antarctica · **What happens:** define, drop, be · **To what, where:** Deserts, freezing, biggest desert, Earth

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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 (little rain, km, Antarctica), 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:18
# text = Deserts are defined by very little rain, not by heat, so they can drop below freezing at night, and Antarctica is the biggest desert on Earth.
# 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, R7-rel-agree ×2
1	Deserts	desert	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj:pass	_	_
2	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux:pass	_	_
3	defined	define	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
4	by	by	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	very	very	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	rain	rain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
10	by	by	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	heat	heat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	conj	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
13	so	so	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
14	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
15	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
16	drop	drop	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
17	below	below	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=18:mark
18	freezing	freezing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=16:advcl|HaikuPos=VERB:VBG:Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part
19	at	at	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=18:obl
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
22	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	27	cc	_	_
23	Antarctica	Antarctica	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	27	nsubj	_	_
24	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	27	cop	_	_
25	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	27	det	_	_
26	biggest	big	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	27	amod	_	_
27	desert	desert	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	conj	_	_
28	on	on	ADP	IN	_	29	case	_	_
29	Earth	Earth	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	27	nmod	_	_
30	.	.	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 | **define** | present · passive | little rain and heat | Deserts |  |  |  |  | vn reflexive\_appearance-48.1.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent subject=Theme |
| 2 | **drop** | can | km |  |  | freezing | night |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V PP.trajectory»: agent=Theme below freezing=Trajectory |
| 3 | **is a** | present | Antarctica | the biggest desert |  | Earth |  |  | 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:005-the-desert.lesson:18`.

**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, R7-rel-agree ×2. **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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