--- title: Clouds are white because their droplets are much bigger than air mol… — Mirrors, rainbows and the blue sky · tree and pragmatics description: Clouds are white because their droplets are much bigger than air molecules and scatter all colours equally; thick rain clouds look grey because little light gets through. Who acts: Clouds, droplets, thick rain clouds, little light. A sentence of the lesson «Mirrors, rainbows and the blue sky» of the --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/15/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Physics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/) / [Mirrors, rainbows and the blue sky](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/) / 15 # Mirrors, rainbows and the blue sky, sentence 15 Clouds are white because their droplets are much bigger than air molecules and scatter all colours equally; thick rain clouds look grey because little light gets through. **Who acts:** Clouds, droplets, thick rain clouds, little light · **What happens:** be, scatter, look, get through · **To what, where:** colours This is a sentence of the lesson «Mirrors, rainbows and the blue sky» of the physics 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 (Clouds, droplets, thick rain clouds, little light), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree. ## The tree {#tree} ```conllu # sent_id = school:physics:021-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky.lesson:15 # text = Clouds are white because their droplets are much bigger than air molecules and scatter all colours equally; thick rain clouds look grey because little light gets through. # source = school lesson (ours) # course = physics # lesson = 021-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky.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): R8-pos-agree ×1 1 Clouds cloud NOUN NNS Number=Plur 3 nsubj _ _ 2 are be AUX VBP Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 3 cop _ _ 3 white white ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 0 root _ _ 4 because because SCONJ IN _ 9 mark _ _ 5 their their PRON PRP$ Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs 6 nmod:poss _ _ 6 droplets droplet NOUN NNS Number=Plur 9 nsubj _ _ 7 are be AUX VBP Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 9 cop _ _ 8 much much ADV RB _ 9 advmod _ _ 9 bigger big ADJ JJR Degree=Cmp 3 advcl _ _ 10 than than ADP IN _ 12 case _ _ 11 air air NOUN NN Number=Sing 12 compound _ _ 12 molecules molecule NOUN NNS Number=Plur 9 obl _ _ 13 and and CCONJ CC _ 14 cc _ _ 14 scatter scatter VERB VBP Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 9 conj _ Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=9:conj|HaikuPos=VERB:VB:VerbForm=Inf 15 all all DET DT PronType=Tot 16 det _ _ 16 colours colour NOUN NNS Number=Plur 14 obj _ _ 17 equally equally ADV RB _ 14 advmod _ _ 18 ; ; PUNCT , _ 22 punct _ _ 19 thick thick ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 21 amod _ _ 20 rain rain NOUN NN Number=Sing 21 compound _ _ 21 clouds cloud NOUN NNS Number=Plur 22 nsubj _ _ 22 look look VERB VBP Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 3 parataxis _ _ 23 grey grey ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 22 xcomp _ _ 24 because because SCONJ IN _ 27 mark _ _ 25 little little ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 26 amod _ _ 26 light light NOUN NN Number=Sing 27 nsubj _ _ 27 gets get VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 22 advcl _ _ 28 through through ADV RB _ 27 advmod _ _ 29 . . PUNCT . _ 3 punct _ _ ``` ## Pragmatics {#pragmatics} No stored speech act for this sentence. | # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | **is** | present | Clouds | | | | | white *property* | tree rules | | 2 | **is** | present | Clouds's droplets | | | | | than air molecules; big *property* | tree rules | | 3 | **scatter** | present | Clouds's droplets *not said here* | all colours | | | | equally *property* | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent colour=Theme | | 4 | **look** | present | thick rain clouds | | | | | grey *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus | | 5 | **get through** | present | little light | | | | | through *property* | vn cope-83-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | 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. **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:physics:021-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky.lesson:15`. **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): R8-pos-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/). - ← previous: [Mirrors, rainbows and the blue sky, 14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/14/) - next →: [Mirrors, rainbows and the blue sky, 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/16/) - ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/)