The politician's either-or and the straw man, sentence 15

"We've always done it this way" (an appeal to tradition) is not a reason on its own: old ways can be good or bad, so check whether they work.

Who acts: We, old ways, interviewers · What happens: do, not be, be, check, work · To what, where: question, reason, own · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of the lesson «The politician's either-or and the straw man» 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 (We, old ways, interviewers), 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	_	5 done	punct
2	We	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	5 done	nsubj
3	've	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	5 done	aux
4	always	always	ADV	PronType=Tot	5 done	advmod
5	done	do	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	19 reason	csubj
6	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 done	obj
7	this	this	DET	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	8 way	det
8	way	way	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 done	obl:unmarked
9	"	"	PUNCT	_	5 done	punct
10	(	(	PUNCT	_	12 appeal	punct
11	an	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	12 appeal	det
12	appeal	appeal	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 done	appos
13	to	to	ADP	_	14 tradition	case
14	tradition	tradition	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 appeal	nmod
15	)	)	PUNCT	_	12 appeal	punct
16	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	19 reason	cop
17	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	19 reason	advmod
18	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	19 reason	det
19	reason	reason	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
20	on	on	ADP	_	22 own	case
21	its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	22 own	nmod:poss
22	own	own	ADJ	Degree=Pos	19 reason	nmod
23	:	:	PUNCT	_	28 good	punct
24	old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	25 ways	amod
25	ways	way	NOUN	Number=Plur	28 good	nsubj
26	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	28 good	aux
27	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	28 good	cop
28	good	good	ADJ	Degree=Pos	19 reason	parataxis
29	or	or	CCONJ	_	30 bad	cc
30	bad	bad	ADJ	Degree=Pos	28 good	conj
31	,	,	PUNCT	_	33 check	punct
32	so	so	ADV	_	33 check	advmod
33	check	check	VERB	Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin	28 good	parataxis
34	whether	whether	SCONJ	_	36 work	mark
35	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	36 work	nsubj
36	work	work	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	33 check	ccomp
37	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 done	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	do in a quote	present · perfect	We	question		this way obl:unmarked; always property	vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality
2	not is a	present		a reason	question's own		tree rules
3	is	can	old ways			good property	tree rules
4	be		old ways not said here				tree rules
5	check	infinitive					tree rules
6	work	present	interviewers = interviewer				vn employment-95.3 «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:world:178-the-politicians-either-or-and-the-straw-man.lesson:15.

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 ×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/world/178-the-politicians-either-or-and-the-straw-man/15/