Not unhappy and not half: litotes, sentence 10

«He's not the brightest» means «he isn't clever»; playing it down makes it sound gentle, but it is still a put-down, so it is not kind to use about classmates.

Who acts: Dad, playing, smile, it · What happens: not be, mean, play down, make, sound, be · To what, where: smile, put · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of the lesson «Not unhappy and not half: litotes» 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 (Dad, playing, smile, it), 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	_	6 brightest	punct
2	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	6 brightest	nsubj
3	's	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	6 brightest	cop
4	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	6 brightest	advmod
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	6 brightest	det
6	brightest	bright	ADJ	Degree=Sup	8 means	ccomp
7	»	»	PUNCT	_	6 brightest	punct
8	means	mean	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
9	«	«	PUNCT	_	13 clever	punct
10	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 »	nsubj
11	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	14 »	cop
12	n't	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	14 »	advmod
13	clever	clever	ADJ	Degree=Pos	8 means	ccomp
14	»	»	PUNCT	_	13 clever	punct
15	;	;	PUNCT	_	16 playing	punct
16	playing	play	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	19 makes	csubj
17	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	16 playing	obj
18	down	down	ADP	_	16 playing	compound:prt
19	makes	make	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	8 means	parataxis
20	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 makes	obj
21	sound	sound	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	19 makes	xcomp
22	gentle	gentle	ADJ	Degree=Pos	21 sound	xcomp
23	,	,	PUNCT	_	31 down	punct
24	but	but	CCONJ	_	29 put	cc
25	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	29 put	nsubj
26	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	29 put	cop
27	still	still	ADV	_	29 put	advmod
28	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	31 down	det
29	put	put	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 makes	conj
30	-	-	PUNCT	_	31 down	punct
31	down	down	ADV	_	29 put	acl
32	,	,	PUNCT	_	31 down	punct
33	so	so	ADV	_	37 kind	advmod
34	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	37 kind	nsubj
35	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	37 kind	cop
36	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	37 kind	advmod
37	kind	kind	ADJ	Degree=Pos	8 means	conj
38	to	to	PART	_	39 use	mark
39	use	use	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	37 kind	xcomp
40	about	about	ADP	_	41 classmates	case
41	classmates	classmate	NOUN	Number=Plur	39 use	obl
42	.	.	PUNCT	_	8 means	punct

Pragmatics

form: statement
act: evaluate
voice: narrator
polarity: neg
teacher: changed act=evaluate, polarity=neg

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	not is in a quote	present	Dad			bright property	tree rules
2	mean	present					vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent
3	play down	gerund		smile			vn use-105.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme
4	make	present	playing	smile			tree rules
5	sound	infinitive	smile not said here			gentle property	vn stimulus_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus
6	is a	present	smile	put	still		tree rules
7	not is	present	it			kind property	tree rules
8	use	to-infinitive				about classmates	vn eat-39.1 «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:050-not-unhappy-and-not-half-litotes.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): R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×4, R7-rel-agree ×2. 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/50-not-unhappy-and-not-half-litotes/10/