---
title: Stars twinkle because their light passes through moving layers of ai… — Stars: what they are · tree and pragmatics
description: Stars twinkle because their light passes through moving layers of air of different temperatures that bend it this way and that. Who acts: Stars, light, different temperatures, nuclei. A sentence of the lesson «Stars: what they are» of the space course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tre
---

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# Stars: what they are, sentence 10

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Stars twinkle because their light passes through moving layers of air of different temperatures that bend it this way and that.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Stars, light, different temperatures, nuclei · **What happens:** twinkle, pass, move, bend, light · **To what, where:** moving layers, star

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Stars: what they are» of the space 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 (Stars, light, different temperatures, nuclei), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:space:017-stars-what-they-are.lesson:10
# text = Stars twinkle because their light passes through moving layers of air of different temperatures that bend it this way and that.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = space
# lesson = 017-stars-what-they-are.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	Stars	star	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
2	twinkle	twinkle	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
4	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	light	light	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	passes	pass	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
7	through	through	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	moving	move	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	amod	_	_
9	layers	layer	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	different	different	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	temperatures	temperature	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nmod	_	_
15	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	16	nsubj	_	_
16	bend	bend	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	acl:relcl	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	_
18	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	19	det	_	_
19	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl:unmarked	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
21	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	19	conj	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	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 | **twinkle** | present | Stars |  |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **pass** | present | nuclei's light |  |  | moving layers of air of different temperatures |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme through layer=Location |
| 3 | **move** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **bend** | present | different temperatures | star |  |  |  | this way *obl:unmarked* | vn knead-26.5 «NP V NP.material»: agent=Agent it=Material |
| 5 | **light** |  | nuclei *= nucleus* |  |  |  |  |  | nom light «phenomenon transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .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:space:017-stars-what-they-are.lesson:10`.

**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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