---
title: Most nouns ending in a consonant plus y change to -ies (baby, babies… — Plurals that make no sense: mice, sheep and geese · tree and pragmatics
description: Most nouns ending in a consonant plus y change to -ies (baby, babies), and some ending in -f change to -ves (leaf, leaves). Who acts: Most nouns, ending. A sentence of the lesson «Plurals that make no sense: mice, sheep and geese» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency t
---

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# Plurals that make no sense: mice, sheep and geese, sentence 17

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Most nouns ending in a consonant plus y change to -ies (baby, babies), and some ending in -f change to -ves (leaf, leaves).

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**Who acts:** Most nouns, ending · **What happens:** end, change · **To what, where:** consonant

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Plurals that make no sense: mice, sheep and geese» of the language 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 (Most nouns, ending), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:010-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese.lesson:17
# text = Most nouns ending in a consonant plus y change to -ies (baby, babies), and some ending in -f change to -ves (leaf, leaves).
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 010-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese.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	Most	most	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	2	amod	_	_
2	nouns	noun	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
3	ending	end	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	2	acl	_	_
4	in	in	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	consonant	consonant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	plus	plus	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	y	y	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	_
9	change	change	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	to	to	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	10	punct	_	_
12	ies	ie	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl	_	_
13	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	14	punct	_	_
14	baby	baby	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	appos	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
16	babies	baby	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	conj	_	_
17	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	14	punct	_	_
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	25	cc	_	_
20	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	21	det	_	_
21	ending	ending	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	nsubj	_	_
22	in	in	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
23	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	22	punct	_	_
24	f	f	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	nmod	_	_
25	change	change	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	_
26	to	to	ADP	IN	_	28	case	_	_
27	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	26	punct	_	_
28	ves	ve	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	25	obl	_	_
29	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	30	punct	_	_
30	leaf	leaf	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	28	conj	_	_
31	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	32	punct	_	_
32	leaves	leaf	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	28	appos	_	_
33	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	32	punct	_	_
34	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	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 | **end** | gerund | Most nouns *not said here* |  |  | a consonant plus y |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |
| 2 | **change** | present | Most nouns |  |  |  |  | to ies *result* | vn turn-26.6.1-1 «NP V PP.result»: agent=Agent to ie=Result |
| 3 | **change** | present | some ending in f |  |  |  |  | to ves and leaf *result* | vn turn-26.6.1-1 «NP V PP.result»: agent=Agent to ve=Result |

<!-- .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:language:010-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese.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): 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/).

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