A bit nippy and not ideal: British understatement, sentence 11
«A bit of a pickle» means a tricky problem, like being locked out at dusk with the keys inside; it has nothing to do with pickles.
Who acts: bit · What happens: mean, lock out, have, do · To what, where: tricky problem, nothing
This is a sentence of the lesson «A bit nippy and not ideal: British understatement» of the language 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 (bit), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | « | « | PUNCT | _ | 3 bit | punct |
| 2 | A | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 3 bit | det |
| 3 | bit | bit | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 means | nsubj |
| 4 | of | of | ADP | _ | 6 pickle | case |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 pickle | det |
| 6 | pickle | pickle | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 bit | nmod |
| 7 | » | » | PUNCT | _ | 3 bit | punct |
| 8 | means | mean | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 9 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 11 problem | det |
| 10 | tricky | tricky | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 11 problem | amod |
| 11 | problem | problem | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 means | obj |
| 12 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 locked | punct |
| 13 | like | like | SCONJ | _ | 15 locked | mark |
| 14 | being | be | AUX | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 15 locked | aux:pass |
| 15 | locked | lock | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 11 problem | acl |
| 16 | out | out | ADP | _ | 15 locked | compound:prt |
| 17 | at | at | ADP | _ | 18 dusk | case |
| 18 | dusk | dusk | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 locked | obl |
| 19 | with | with | ADP | _ | 21 keys | case |
| 20 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 21 keys | det |
| 21 | keys | key | NOUN | Number=Plur | 15 locked | obl |
| 22 | inside | inside | ADV | _ | 21 keys | advmod |
| 23 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 25 has | punct |
| 24 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 25 has | nsubj |
| 25 | has | have | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 8 means | parataxis |
| 26 | nothing | nothing | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Neg | 25 has | obj |
| 27 | to | to | PART | _ | 28 do | mark |
| 28 | do | do | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 26 nothing | acl |
| 29 | with | with | ADP | _ | 30 pickles | case |
| 30 | pickles | pickle | NOUN | Number=Plur | 28 do | obl |
| 31 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 8 means | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | mean | present | a bit of a pickle | a tricky problem | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent problem=Topic | ||||
| 2 | lock out | gerund · passive | a tricky problem not said here | dusk | with the keys | vn tape-22.4 «NP V NP PP.co-patient PP.instrument»: with key=Instrument | |||
| 3 | have | present | bit | nothing | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Patient | ||||
| 4 | do | to-infinitive | bit not said here | nothing not said here | with pickles | vn act-114-1 «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, 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:language:049-a-bit-nippy-and-not-ideal-british-understatement.lesson:11.
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): R7-rel-agree ×1, 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.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/49-a-bit-nippy-and-not-ideal-british-understatement/11/