---
title: It is like a moth flying across a distant lighthouse: you cannot see… — Exoplanets and the search for life · tree and pragmatics
description: It is like a moth flying across a distant lighthouse: you cannot see the moth, but the light flickers. Who acts: star, moth, you, light. A sentence of the lesson «Exoplanets and the search for life» of the space course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every cla
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/26-exoplanets-and-the-search-for-life/2/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[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/) / [Space](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/) / [Exoplanets and the search for life](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/26-exoplanets-and-the-search-for-life/) / 2

# Exoplanets and the search for life, sentence 2

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
It is like a moth flying across a distant lighthouse: you cannot see the moth, but the light flickers.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** star, moth, you, light · **What happens:** be, fly, not see, flicker · **To what, where:** distant lighthouse, moth

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Exoplanets and the search for life» 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 (star, moth, you, light), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:space:026-exoplanets-and-the-search-for-life.lesson:2
# text = It is like a moth flying across a distant lighthouse: you cannot see the moth, but the light flickers.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = space
# lesson = 026-exoplanets-and-the-search-for-life.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): R1-cc-next ×1
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	like	like	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	moth	moth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	flying	fly	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	5	acl	_	_
7	across	across	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	distant	distant	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	lighthouse	lighthouse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
11	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	15	punct	_	_
12	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
13	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
14	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	15	advmod	_	_
15	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	parataxis	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	moth	moth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	_
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
19	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	Agree=R1-cc-next|Haiku=15:cc
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
21	light	light	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	nsubj	_	_
22	flickers	flicker	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	conj	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	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** | present | star |  |  |  |  | like a moth | tree rules |
| 2 | **fly** | gerund | a moth *not said here* |  |  | a distant lighthouse |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme across lighthouse=Trajectory |
| 3 | **not** **see** | can | you | the moth |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer moth=Stimulus |
| 4 | **flicker** | present | light |  |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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:026-exoplanets-and-the-search-for-life.lesson:2`.

**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): R1-cc-next ×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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Exoplanets and the search for life, 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/26-exoplanets-and-the-search-for-life/1/)
- next →: [Exoplanets and the search for life, 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/26-exoplanets-and-the-search-for-life/3/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/26-exoplanets-and-the-search-for-life/)