A bit nippy and not ideal: British understatement, sentence 13
Many British people praise by playing down, so as not to sound big-headed: «the girls did alright today» after a 5–0 cup final win means they were brilliant.
Who acts: Many British people, girls · What happens: praise, play down, not sound, do, mean, be · Speech: someone speaks here
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 (Many British people, girls), 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 | Many | many | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 people | amod |
| 2 | British | British | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 people | amod |
| 3 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 praise | nsubj |
| 4 | praise | praise | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 5 | by | by | SCONJ | _ | 6 playing | mark |
| 6 | playing | play | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 4 praise | advcl |
| 7 | down | down | ADV | _ | 6 playing | compound:prt |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 13 sound | punct |
| 9 | so | so | ADV | _ | 13 sound | advmod |
| 10 | as | as | SCONJ | _ | 13 sound | mark |
| 11 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 13 sound | advmod |
| 12 | to | to | PART | _ | 13 sound | mark |
| 13 | sound | sound | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 6 playing | advcl |
| 14 | big | big | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 16 headed | amod |
| 15 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 14 big | punct |
| 16 | headed | head | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 13 sound | xcomp |
| 17 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 21 did | punct |
| 18 | « | « | PUNCT | _ | 21 did | punct |
| 19 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 20 girls | det |
| 20 | girls | girl | NOUN | Number=Plur | 21 did | nsubj |
| 21 | did | do | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 praise | parataxis |
| 22 | alright | alright | ADV | _ | 23 today | advmod |
| 23 | today | today | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 did | obl:unmarked |
| 24 | » | » | PUNCT | _ | 21 did | punct |
| 25 | after | after | ADP | _ | 32 win | case |
| 26 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 32 win | det |
| 27 | 5 | 5 | NUM | NumForm=Digit NumType=Card | 28 – | nummod |
| 28 | – | – | NOUN | Number=Sing | 30 cup | compound |
| 29 | 0 | 0 | NUM | NumForm=Digit NumType=Card | 28 – | flat |
| 30 | cup | cup | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 win | compound |
| 31 | final | final | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 32 win | amod |
| 32 | win | within | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 did | obl |
| 33 | means | mean | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 4 praise | parataxis |
| 34 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 36 brilliant | nsubj |
| 35 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 36 brilliant | cop |
| 36 | brilliant | brilliant | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 33 means | ccomp |
| 37 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 praise | punct |
Pragmatics
- form
- statement
- act
- assert
- voice
- narrator
- polarity
- none
- teacher
- changed act=assert
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | praise | present | Many British people | vn characterize-29.2 «NP V NP to be ADJ»: agent=Agent clause=Attribute | |||||
| 2 | play down | gerund | Many British people not said here | vn performance-26.7-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 3 | not sound | to-infinitive | Many British people not said here | head property | vn stimulus_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus | ||||
| 4 | do in a quote | past | the girls | after a cup final win; today | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 5 | mean | present | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent | ||||||
| 6 | is | past | girls = girl | brilliant property | tree rules |
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:13.
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): R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×2, 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/13/