---
title: Picture it: an ostrich, terrified, plunges its head into the sand an… — Wild animals and tall tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Picture it: an ostrich, terrified, plunges its head into the sand and stays there, bottom in the air, thinking nobody can see it. Who acts: you, ostrich, nobody. A sentence of the lesson «Wild animals and tall tales» of the myths course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragm
---

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# Wild animals and tall tales, sentence 0

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Picture it: an ostrich, terrified, plunges its head into the sand and stays there, bottom in the air, thinking nobody can see it.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you, ostrich, nobody · **What happens:** picture, plunge, stay, think, see · **To what, where:** it, head, sand · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Wild animals and tall tales» 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 (you, ostrich, nobody), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:myths:008-wild-animals-and-tall-tales.lesson:0
# text = Picture it: an ostrich, terrified, plunges its head into the sand and stays there, bottom in the air, thinking nobody can see it.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = myths
# lesson = 008-wild-animals-and-tall-tales.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	Picture	picture	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	obj	_	_
3	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	1	punct	_	_
4	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	ostrich	ostrich	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	terrified	terrified	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	plunges	plunge	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	parataxis	_	_
10	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	into	into	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	sand	sand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
16	stays	stay	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	_
17	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	16	advmod	_	_
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
19	bottom	bottom	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	conj	_	_
20	in	in	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nmod	_	_
23	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
24	thinking	think	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	advcl	_	_
25	nobody	nobody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	27	nsubj	_	_
26	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	27	aux	_	_
27	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	24	ccomp	_	_
28	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	27	obj	_	_
29	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: command
- act: request
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **picture** | imperative | you *not said here* | it |  |  |  |  | vn characterize-29.2 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 2 | **plunge** | present | a ostrich | ostrich's head |  | the sand |  |  | vn meander-47.7-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location head=Theme |
| 3 | **stay** | present | a ostrich *not said here* |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **think** *speech: other* | gerund | a ostrich *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 5 | **see** | can | nobody | head |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer it=Stimulus |

<!-- .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:myths:008-wild-animals-and-tall-tales.lesson:0`.

**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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