---
title: A tortoise's shell is part of its skeleton, joined to its backbone a… — Wild animals and tall tales · tree and pragmatics
description: A tortoise's shell is part of its skeleton, joined to its backbone and ribs, so it can never climb out of it. Who acts: shell. 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 pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Wild animals and tall tales, sentence 16

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A tortoise's shell is part of its skeleton, joined to its backbone and ribs, so it can never climb out of it.

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**Who acts:** shell · **What happens:** be, join, not climb · **To what, where:** part, skeleton

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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 (shell), 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:16
# text = A tortoise's shell is part of its skeleton, joined to its backbone and ribs, so it can never climb out of 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): R5-strong ×1
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=4:det
2	tortoise	tortoise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod:poss	_	_
3	's	's	PART	POS	_	2	case	_	_
4	shell	shell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	part	part	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	skeleton	skeleton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	joined	join	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	conj	_	_
12	to	to	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	backbone	backbone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
16	ribs	rib	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	conj	_	_
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
18	so	so	ADV	RB	_	22	advmod	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	nsubj	_	_
20	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	22	aux	_	_
21	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	22	advmod	_	_
22	climb	climb	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
23	out	out	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
24	of	of	ADP	IN	_	23	fixed	_	_
25	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	obl	_	_
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	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 a** | present | a tortoise's shell | part |  |  |  | of shell's skeleton | tree rules |
| 2 | **join** | participle | a tortoise's shell *not said here* |  |  |  |  | to shell's backbone and ribs | vn mix-22.1-2-1 «NP V PP.patient»: agent=Patient to backbone=Co-Patient |
| 3 | **not** **climb** | can | shell |  |  | skeleton |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme out it=Trajectory |

<!-- .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: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): 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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