---
title: Many lizards can drop their tail to escape, so you never hold a liza… — Birds, reptiles and choosing a pet · tree and pragmatics
description: Many lizards can drop their tail to escape, so you never hold a lizard by its tail. Who acts: Many lizards, you. A sentence of the lesson «Birds, reptiles and choosing a pet» 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/64-birds-reptiles-and-choosing-a-pet/16/)

<!-- 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/) / [Birds, reptiles and choosing a pet](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/64-birds-reptiles-and-choosing-a-pet/) / 16

# Birds, reptiles and choosing a pet, sentence 16

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Many lizards can drop their tail to escape, so you never hold a lizard by its tail.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Many lizards, you · **What happens:** drop, escape, not hold · **To what, where:** tail, lizard

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Birds, reptiles and choosing a pet» 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 lizards, you), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:064-birds-reptiles-and-choosing-a-pet.lesson:16
# text = Many lizards can drop their tail to escape, so you never hold a lizard by its tail.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 064-birds-reptiles-and-choosing-a-pet.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): no change
1	Many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	lizards	lizard	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	drop	drop	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	escape	escape	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	advcl	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	so	so	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
11	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	hold	hold	VERB	VB	Mood=Sub|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	lizard	lizard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
16	by	by	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	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 | **drop** | can | Many lizards | lizards's tail |  |  |  |  | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tail=Theme |
| 2 | **escape** | to-infinitive | Many lizards *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **not** **hold** | infinitive | you | a lizard |  |  |  | by tail's tail | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent lizard=Theme by tail=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:064-birds-reptiles-and-choosing-a-pet.lesson:16`.

**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): no change. **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: [Birds, reptiles and choosing a pet, 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/64-birds-reptiles-and-choosing-a-pet/15/)
- next →: [Birds, reptiles and choosing a pet, 17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/64-birds-reptiles-and-choosing-a-pet/17/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/64-birds-reptiles-and-choosing-a-pet/)