---
title: wèn (falling) is to ask and wěn (dipping) is to kiss, so qǐng wèn (m… — The four tones: same sound, different meaning · tree and pragmatics
description: wèn (falling) is to ask and wěn (dipping) is to kiss, so qǐng wèn (may I ask) must fall. Who acts: wèn, wěn, I. A sentence of the lesson «The four tones: same sound, different meaning» of the chinese street course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The four tones: same sound, different meaning, sentence 14

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
wèn (falling) is to ask and wěn (dipping) is to kiss, so qǐng wèn (may I ask) must fall.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** wèn, wěn, I · **What happens:** be, qǐng, ask, fall · **To what, where:** wèn

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This is a sentence of the lesson «The four tones: same sound, different meaning» of the chinese street 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 (wèn, wěn, I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:chinese-street:002-the-four-tones.lesson:14
# text = wèn (falling) is to ask and wěn (dipping) is to kiss, so qǐng wèn (may I ask) must fall.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = chinese-street
# lesson = 002-the-four-tones.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	wèn	wèn	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
2	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	3	punct	_	_
3	falling	falling	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	appos	_	_
4	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	3	punct	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
9	wěn	wěn	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
10	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	11	punct	_	_
11	dipping	dipping	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	appos	_	_
12	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	11	punct	_	_
13	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	kiss	kiss	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	conj	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
17	so	so	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	qǐng	qǐng	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	26	advcl	_	_
19	wèn	wèn	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	_
20	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	23	punct	_	_
21	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	23	aux	_	_
22	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	23	nsubj	_	_
23	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	19	parataxis	_	_
24	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	23	punct	_	_
25	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	26	aux	_	_
26	fall	fall	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	conj	_	_
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | wèn |  |  |  |  | ask *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | present | wěn |  |  |  |  | kiss *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **qǐng** | gerund |  | wèn |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **ask** *speech: ask* | may | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **fall** | must | wèn *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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:chinese-street:002-the-four-tones.lesson:14`.

**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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