---
title: Most people accept tax as the price of public services; they argue a… — Neighbours, the council, rules and fairness · tree and pragmatics
description: Most people accept tax as the price of public services; they argue about how much and what it is spent on. Who acts: Most people, people. A sentence of the lesson «Neighbours, the council, rules and fairness» of the adult life course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmati
---

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# Neighbours, the council, rules and fairness, sentence 16

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Most people accept tax as the price of public services; they argue about how much and what it is spent on.

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**Who acts:** Most people, people · **What happens:** accept, argue, spend · **To what, where:** tax

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Neighbours, the council, rules and fairness» of the adult life 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 (Most people, people), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:adult-life:033-neighbours-the-council-rules-and-fairness.lesson:16
# text = Most people accept tax as the price of public services; they argue about how much and what it is spent on.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = adult-life
# lesson = 033-neighbours-the-council-rules-and-fairness.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): no change
1	Most	most	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	2	amod	_	_
2	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	accept	accept	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	tax	tax	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
5	as	as	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	price	price	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	public	public	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	services	service	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nmod	_	_
11	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	argue	argue	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
14	about	about	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	16	advmod	_	_
16	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	obl	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
18	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	16	conj	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj:pass	_	_
20	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	21	aux:pass	_	_
21	spent	spend	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	18	acl:relcl	_	_
22	on	on	ADP	IN	_	21	obl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **accept** | present | Most people | tax |  |  |  | as the price of public services | vn characterize-29.2-1-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent tax=Theme as price=Attribute |
| 2 | **argue** *speech: disagree* | present | people |  |  |  |  | about much | vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V PP.theme S»: agent=Agent about much=Topic |
| 3 | **spend** | present · passive |  | tax |  |  |  |  | vn consume-66-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Asset |

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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.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/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:adult-life:033-neighbours-the-council-rules-and-fairness.lesson:16`.

**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): no change. **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](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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- ← previous: [Neighbours, the council, rules and fai…, 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/33-neighbours-the-council-rules-and-fairness/15/)
- next →: [Neighbours, the council, rules and fai…, 17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/33-neighbours-the-council-rules-and-fairness/17/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/33-neighbours-the-council-rules-and-fairness/)