---
title: In the dark, our brains are more likely to imagine danger, which is… — Sleepovers and spooky stories · tree and pragmatics
description: In the dark, our brains are more likely to imagine danger, which is why ordinary shapes and sounds feel scary at night. Who acts: brains. A sentence of the lesson «Sleepovers and spooky stories» of the myths course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Sleepovers and spooky stories, sentence 14

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In the dark, our brains are more likely to imagine danger, which is why ordinary shapes and sounds feel scary at night.

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**Who acts:** brains · **What happens:** be, imagine · **To what, where:** dark, danger

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Sleepovers and spooky stories» of the myths 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 (brains), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:myths:026-sleepovers-and-spooky-stories.lesson:14
# text = In the dark, our brains are more likely to imagine danger, which is why ordinary shapes and sounds feel scary at night.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = myths
# lesson = 026-sleepovers-and-spooky-stories.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 ×1
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	dark	dark	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
5	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	brains	brain	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
7	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
8	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	9	advmod	_	_
9	likely	likely	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	imagine	imagine	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	_
12	danger	danger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
14	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	21	nsubj	_	_
15	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	21	cop	_	_
16	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	21	advmod	_	_
17	ordinary	ordinary	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	shapes	shape	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	21	nsubj	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
20	sounds	sound	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	conj	_	_
21	feel	feel	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	parataxis	_	_
22	scary	scary	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	xcomp	_	_
23	at	at	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
24	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=22:obl
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | our brains |  |  | the dark |  | likely *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **imagine** | to-infinitive | our brains *not said here* | danger |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot danger=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | present |  |  |  |  | night | feel, scary *property* | tree rules |

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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:myths:026-sleepovers-and-spooky-stories.lesson:14`.

**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 ×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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