Not unhappy and not half: litotes, sentence 9

«That's not the worst idea you've had» is a dry way of saying «good idea»; a smile and «let's do it» show what Dad really means.

Who acts: That, you, dry way, smile, 's, Dad · What happens: not be, have, be, say, let, do · To what, where: worst idea, dry way, good idea, 's, smile · 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 (That, you, dry way, smile), 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	_	7 idea	punct
2	That	that	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	7 idea	nsubj
3	's	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	7 idea	cop
4	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	7 idea	advmod
5	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 idea	det
6	worst	bad	ADJ	Degree=Sup	7 idea	amod
7	idea	idea	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 way	csubj
8	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	10 had	nsubj
9	've	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	10 had	aux
10	had	have	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	7 idea	acl:relcl
11	»	»	PUNCT	_	7 idea	punct
12	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	15 way	cop
13	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	15 way	det
14	dry	dry	ADJ	Degree=Pos	15 way	amod
15	way	way	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
16	of	of	SCONJ	_	17 saying	mark
17	saying	say	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	15 way	acl
18	«	«	PUNCT	_	20 idea	punct
19	good	good	ADJ	Degree=Pos	20 idea	amod
20	idea	idea	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 saying	obj
21	»	»	PUNCT	_	20 idea	punct
22	;	;	PUNCT	_	24 smile	punct
23	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	24 smile	det
24	smile	smile	NOUN	Number=Sing	32 show	nsubj
25	and	and	CCONJ	_	27 let	cc
26	«	«	PUNCT	_	27 let	punct
27	let	let	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	24 smile	conj
28	's	we	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	27 let	obj
29	do	do	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	27 let	xcomp
30	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	29 do	obj
31	»	»	PUNCT	_	27 let	punct
32	show	show	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	15 way	parataxis
33	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	36 means	obj
34	Dad	Dad	PROPN	Number=Sing	36 means	nsubj
35	really	really	ADV	_	36 means	advmod
36	means	mean	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	32 show	ccomp
37	.	.	PUNCT	_	15 way	punct

Pragmatics

form: statement
act: assert
voice: narrator
polarity: none
teacher: changed act=assert

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	not is a in a quote	present	That	the worst idea	tree rules
2	have in a quote	present · perfect	you	the worst idea not said here	vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent idea=Patient
3	is a	present		a dry way	tree rules
4	say speech: assert	gerund	a dry way not said here	good idea	vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent idea=Topic
5	let in a quote	infinitive	a smile not said here	's	tree rules
6	do in a quote	infinitive	's not said here	smile	vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality
7	show	infinitive	a smile		vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
8	mean	present	Dad		vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Topic

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:9.

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 ×2, 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/50-not-unhappy-and-not-half-litotes/9/