---
title: Musk oxen form a ring facing outwards, with calves in the middle, so… — How animals defend themselves · tree and pragmatics
description: Musk oxen form a ring facing outwards, with calves in the middle, so wolves meet only a wall of horns. Who acts: Musk oxen, ring, wolves. A sentence of the lesson «How animals defend themselves» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every claus
---

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# How animals defend themselves, sentence 17

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Musk oxen form a ring facing outwards, with calves in the middle, so wolves meet only a wall of horns.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Musk oxen, ring, wolves · **What happens:** form, face, meet · **To what, where:** ring, wall

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «How animals defend themselves» 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 (Musk oxen, ring, wolves), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:053-how-animals-defend-themselves.lesson:17
# text = Musk oxen form a ring facing outwards, with calves in the middle, so wolves meet only a wall of horns.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 053-how-animals-defend-themselves.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): R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×2
1	Musk	musk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	compound	_	_
2	oxen	oxen	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	form	form	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	ring	ring	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	facing	face	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	acl	_	_
7	outwards	outward	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	with	with	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	calves	calf	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	middle	middle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
15	so	so	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=17:mark|HaikuPos=SCONJ:IN:_
16	wolves	wolf	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	nsubj	_	_
17	meet	meet	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
18	only	only	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	wall	wall	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=17:obl
21	of	of	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	horns	horn	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nmod	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=2:punct
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **form** | present | Musk oxen | a ring |  |  |  | with calves in the middle | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location ring=Theme |
| 2 | **face** | gerund | a ring *not said here* |  |  |  |  | outward *property* | vn fill-9.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **meet** | present | wolves | a wall of horns |  |  |  |  | vn meet-36.3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wall=Co-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:053-how-animals-defend-themselves.lesson:17`.

**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): R6-punct-agree ×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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