---
title: Stars twinkle because moving air bends their light this way and that… — Stars, planets and constellations in the night sky · tree and pragmatics
description: Stars twinkle because moving air bends their light this way and that; planets usually shine more steadily. Who acts: Stars, moving air, planets. A sentence of the lesson «Stars, planets and constellations in the night sky» of the world course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the
---

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# Stars, planets and constellations in the night sky, sentence 12

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Stars twinkle because moving air bends their light this way and that; planets usually shine more steadily.

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**Who acts:** Stars, moving air, planets · **What happens:** twinkle, move, bend, shine, light · **To what, where:** light

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Stars, planets and constellations in the night sky» of the world 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, moving air, planets), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:world:070-the-night-sky.lesson:12
# text = Stars twinkle because moving air bends their light this way and that; planets usually shine more steadily.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = world
# lesson = 070-the-night-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): R5-strong ×2, R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1
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	moving	move	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	5	amod	_	_
5	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	bends	bend	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
7	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	light	light	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	10	det	_	_
10	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=6:obj
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	10	conj	_	_
13	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	planets	planet	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	_
15	usually	usually	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
16	shine	shine	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
17	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	18	advmod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=16:advmod
18	steadily	steadily	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=17:advmod
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=6: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 | **twinkle** | present | Stars |  |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **move** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **bend** | present | moving air | stars's light |  |  |  | this way *obl* | vn knead-26.5 «NP V NP.material»: agent=Agent light=Material |
| 4 | **shine** | present | planets |  |  |  |  | steadily, usually *property* | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **light** |  | stars *= star* |  |  |  |  |  | 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:world:070-the-night-sky.lesson:12`.

**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 ×2, R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-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/).

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