---
title: Psalms 34:14 (JPS 1917) — Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. · tree and pragmatics
description: Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. Who acts: you. Psalms 34:14 in JPS 1917 with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Psalms 34:14 · JPS 1917

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Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile.

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** keep, speak · **To what, where:** tongue, evil, guile · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is Psalms 34:14 · JPS 1917 in the English of the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 translation, from Mova's open Bible corpus. The page gives the sentence's syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies, parsed by Mova and checked by a teacher model — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it. The original of the verse links back to its own tree and to the Targum.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = jps:PSA:519
# text = Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile.
1	Keep	keep	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	thy	thy	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	tongue	tongue	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obj	_	_
4	from	from	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	evil	evil	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	thy	thy	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	lips	lip	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	conj	_	_
10	from	from	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
11	speaking	speak	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	1	advcl	_	_
12	guile	guile	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: command
- act: request
- voice: narrator
- polarity: neg
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **keep** | imperative | you *not said here* | thy tongue and thy lips |  | evil |  |  | vn forbid-64.4 «NP V NP PP.theme»: agent=Causer tongue=Beneficiary from evil=Eventuality |
| 2 | **speak** *speech: other* | gerund | you *not said here* | guile |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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.

## The Hebrew of this verse {#hebrew}

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נְצֹ֣ר לְשׁוֹנְךָ֣ מֵרָ֑ע וּ֝שְׂפָתֶ֗יךָ מִדַּבֵּ֥ר מִרְמָֽה׃

[Psalms 34:14: the Hebrew tree, its pragmatics and the Targum →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/ketuvim/PSA.34.14/)

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**Source.** The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text, Jewish Publication Society, 1917, from eBible.org: public domain. Sentence `jps:PSA:519` of Mova's parse database.

**The tree and the speech act** come from Mova's cycle: the small model's draft, read by a large model as teacher, passed by Mova's gates (Elamur Cosmic License). **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the chapter read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence of the chapter.

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