---
title: Some songs are sillier or darker than they sound: "Alouette, gentill… — Songs and rhymes · tree and pragmatics
description: Some songs are sillier or darker than they sound: "Alouette, gentille alouette" is a cheerful tune about plucking a lark's feathers, one body part at a time. Who acts: songs, Alouette, cheerful tune. A sentence of the lesson «Songs and rhymes» of the french course of Mova's primary school with its d
---

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# Songs and rhymes, sentence 3

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Some songs are sillier or darker than they sound: "Alouette, gentille alouette" is a cheerful tune about plucking a lark's feathers, one body part at a time.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** songs, Alouette, cheerful tune · **What happens:** be, sound, pluck · **To what, where:** cheerful tune, feathers

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Songs and rhymes» of the french 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 (songs, Alouette, cheerful tune), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:french:031-songs-and-rhymes.lesson:3
# text = Some songs are sillier or darker than they sound: "Alouette, gentille alouette" is a cheerful tune about plucking a lark's feathers, one body part at a time.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = french
# lesson = 031-songs-and-rhymes.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): R5-strong ×2, R6-punct-agree ×1
1	Some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	2	det	_	_
2	songs	song	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	sillier	silly	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
5	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	darker	dark	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	4	conj	_	_
7	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	sound	sound	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=6:advcl
10	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	12	punct	_	_
11	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	_
12	Alouette	Alouette	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	20	nsubj	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	gentille	gentille	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	alouette	alouette	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	appos	_	_
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=15:punct
17	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	20	cop	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
19	cheerful	cheerful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	tune	tune	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	ccomp	_	_
21	about	about	SCONJ	IN	_	22	mark	_	_
22	plucking	pluck	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	20	acl	_	_
23	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	24	det	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=26:det
24	lark	lark	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	nmod:poss	_	_
25	's	's	PART	POS	_	24	case	_	_
26	feathers	feather	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	22	obj	_	_
27	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	30	punct	_	_
28	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	30	nummod	_	_
29	body	body	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	30	compound	_	_
30	part	part	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	acl:relcl	_	_
31	at	at	ADP	IN	_	33	case	_	_
32	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	33	det	_	_
33	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	30	nmod	_	_
34	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	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 | **is** | present | some songs |  |  |  |  | silly *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | some songs *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **sound** | present | Songs *= song* |  |  |  |  |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 4 | **is a** | present | Alouette | a cheerful tune |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 5 | **pluck** | gerund | a cheerful tune *not said here* | a lark's feathers |  |  |  |  | vn braid-41.2.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent feather=Patient |

<!-- .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:french:031-songs-and-rhymes.lesson:3`.

**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): R5-strong ×2, R6-punct-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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- ← previous: [Songs and rhymes, 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/31-songs-and-rhymes/2/)
- next →: [Songs and rhymes, 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/31-songs-and-rhymes/4/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/31-songs-and-rhymes/)