---
title: Octopuses have tiny colour sacs in their skin that muscles stretch o… — Leaves, fruit and colour in nature · tree and pragmatics
description: Octopuses have tiny colour sacs in their skin that muscles stretch open or squeeze shut, and some can match their background in less than a second. Who acts: Octopuses, muscles, some. A sentence of the lesson «Leaves, fruit and colour in nature» of the chemistry course of Mova's primary school with 
---

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# Leaves, fruit and colour in nature, sentence 18

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Octopuses have tiny colour sacs in their skin that muscles stretch open or squeeze shut, and some can match their background in less than a second.

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**Who acts:** Octopuses, muscles, some · **What happens:** have, stretch, squeeze, match · **To what, where:** tiny colour sacs, skin, background

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Leaves, fruit and colour in nature» of the chemistry 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 (Octopuses, muscles, some), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:chemistry:028-colour-in-nature.lesson:18
# text = Octopuses have tiny colour sacs in their skin that muscles stretch open or squeeze shut, and some can match their background in less than a second.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = chemistry
# lesson = 028-colour-in-nature.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): R7-rel-agree ×1
1	Octopuses	octopus	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
2	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	tiny	tiny	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
4	colour	colour	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	compound	_	_
5	sacs	sac	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	skin	skin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
9	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	11	obj	_	_
10	muscles	muscle	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
11	stretch	stretch	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	_
12	open	open	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	xcomp	_	_
13	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	squeeze	squeeze	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	conj	_	_
15	shut	shut	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	xcomp	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
18	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	20	nsubj	_	_
19	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
20	match	match	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=2:parataxis
21	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	22	nmod:poss	_	_
22	background	background	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obj	_	_
23	in	in	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
24	less	less	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp|ExtPos=ADV	27	advmod	_	_
25	than	than	ADP	IN	_	24	fixed	_	_
26	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	27	det	_	_
27	second	second	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obl	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	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 | **have** | present | Octopuses | tiny colour sacs |  | Octopuses's skin |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sac=Patient |
| 2 | **stretch** | present | muscles | tiny colour sacs |  |  |  | open *property* | vn bend-45.2 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent that=Patient |
| 3 | **squeeze** | present | muscles *not said here* |  |  |  |  | shut *property* | vn push-12-1-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **match** | can | some | Octopuses's background |  |  | second |  | vn amalgamate-22.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent background=Patient |

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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:chemistry:028-colour-in-nature.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): R7-rel-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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