---
title: Adult cats rarely meow to each other: meowing is mostly how cats tal… — How animals talk · tree and pragmatics
description: Adult cats rarely meow to each other: meowing is mostly how cats talk to people, and cats purr when content but sometimes also when hurt or unwell. Who acts: Adult cats, cats. A sentence of the lesson «How animals talk» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the 
---

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# How animals talk, sentence 8

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Adult cats rarely meow to each other: meowing is mostly how cats talk to people, and cats purr when content but sometimes also when hurt or unwell.

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**Who acts:** Adult cats, cats · **What happens:** meow, be, purr, hurt · **To what, where:** each

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This is a sentence of the lesson «How animals talk» 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 (Adult cats, cats), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:050-how-animals-talk.lesson:8
# text = Adult cats rarely meow to each other: meowing is mostly how cats talk to people, and cats purr when content but sometimes also when hurt or unwell.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 050-how-animals-talk.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): R8-pos-agree ×1
1	Adult	adult	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	cats	cat	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	rarely	rarely	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	meow	meow	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=0:root|HaikuPos=VERB:VB:Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	each	each	DET	DT	ExtPos=PRON|PronType=Rcp	4	obl	_	_
7	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	fixed	_	_
8	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	22	punct	_	_
9	meowing	meow	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	14	csubj	_	_
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
11	mostly	mostly	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
12	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	14	advmod	_	_
13	cats	cat	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nsubj	_	_
14	talk	talk	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
15	to	to	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obl	_	_
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
18	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
19	cats	cat	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nsubj	_	_
20	purr	purr	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	conj	_	_
21	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	22	advmod	_	_
22	content	content	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	advcl	_	_
23	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	27	cc	_	_
24	sometimes	sometimes	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	27	advmod	_	_
25	also	also	ADV	RB	_	27	advmod	_	_
26	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	27	advmod	_	_
27	hurt	hurt	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	22	conj	_	_
28	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	29	cc	_	_
29	unwell	unwell	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	conj	_	_
30	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **meow** | present | Adult cats |  | each |  |  | rarely *property* | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V PP.recipient»: agent=Agent to each=Recipient |
| 2 | **meow** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** | present | cats |  |  |  |  | to people; mostly, talk *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **purr** | present | cats |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **hurt** | participle | cats *not said here* |  |  |  |  | sometimes *property* | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |

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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:050-how-animals-talk.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): R8-pos-agree ×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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