---
title: A rubbed comb can pick up bits of paper and even bend a thin stream… — Static electricity: balloons, hair and sparks · tree and pragmatics
description: A rubbed comb can pick up bits of paper and even bend a thin stream of tap water. Who acts: rubbed comb. A sentence of the lesson «Static electricity: balloons, hair and sparks» of the physics course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Static electricity: balloons, hair and sparks, sentence 8

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A rubbed comb can pick up bits of paper and even bend a thin stream of tap water.

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**Who acts:** rubbed comb · **What happens:** rub, pick up, bend · **To what, where:** bits, thin stream

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Static electricity: balloons, hair and sparks» 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 (rubbed comb), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:physics:026-static-electricity-balloons-hair-and-sparks.lesson:8
# text = A rubbed comb can pick up bits of paper and even bend a thin stream of tap water.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = physics
# lesson = 026-static-electricity-balloons-hair-and-sparks.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	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	rubbed	rub	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	amod	_	_
3	comb	comb	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	pick	pick	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	up	up	ADP	RP	_	5	compound:prt	_	_
7	bits	bit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	paper	paper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	even	even	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	bend	bend	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	thin	thin	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	stream	stream	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
16	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	tap	tap	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	compound	_	_
18	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **rub** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V PP.destination»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **pick up** | can | a rubbed comb | bits of paper |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bit=Topic |
| 3 | **bend** | infinitive | a rubbed comb *not said here* | a thin stream of tap water |  |  |  |  | vn knead-26.5 «NP V NP.material»: agent=Agent stream=Material |

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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:physics:026-static-electricity-balloons-hair-and-sparks.lesson:8`.

**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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