---
title: Many cats do not like their belly touched, even when they lie on the… — Understanding cats · tree and pragmatics
description: Many cats do not like their belly touched, even when they lie on their back. Who acts: Many cats, belly, Cats. A sentence of the lesson «Understanding cats» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/23-understanding-cats/15/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[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/) / [Everyday](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/) / [Understanding cats](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/23-understanding-cats/) / 15

# Understanding cats, sentence 15

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Many cats do not like their belly touched, even when they lie on their back.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Many cats, belly, Cats · **What happens:** not like, touch, lie · **To what, where:** back

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Understanding cats» of the everyday 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 (Many cats, belly, Cats), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:023-understanding-cats.lesson:15
# text = Many cats do not like their belly touched, even when they lie on their back.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 023-understanding-cats.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	Many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	cats	cat	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
3	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	like	like	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	belly	belly	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
8	touched	touch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	xcomp	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=5:ccomp|HaikuPos=VERB:VBD:Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	even	even	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
11	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	13	advmod	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	lie	lie	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
14	on	on	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	back	back	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	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 | **not** **like** | present · do-support | Many cats |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **touch** *not said to happen* | participle | Cats's belly |  |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **lie** | present | Cats *= cat* |  |  | Cats's back |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on back=Location |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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:everyday:023-understanding-cats.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): 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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Understanding cats, 14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/23-understanding-cats/14/)
- next →: [Understanding cats, 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/23-understanding-cats/16/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/23-understanding-cats/)