---
title: mǎi (dipping) is to buy and mài (falling) is to sell; only the tone… — The four tones: same sound, different meaning · tree and pragmatics
description: mǎi (dipping) is to buy and mài (falling) is to sell; only the tone tells these opposites apart. Who acts: mǎi, mài, tone. 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 eve
---

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# The four tones: same sound, different meaning, sentence 15

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mǎi (dipping) is to buy and mài (falling) is to sell; only the tone tells these opposites apart.

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**Who acts:** mǎi, mài, tone · **What happens:** be, tell · **To what, where:** opposites · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (mǎi, mài, tone), 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:15
# text = mǎi (dipping) is to buy and mài (falling) is to sell; only the tone tells these opposites apart.
# 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	mǎi	mǎi	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	7	nsubj	_	_
2	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	3	punct	_	_
3	dipping	dipping	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	buy	buy	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
9	mài	mài	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	15	nsubj	_	_
10	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	11	punct	_	_
11	falling	falling	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	sell	sell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	conj	_	_
16	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
17	only	only	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	tone	tone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nsubj	_	_
20	tells	tell	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	parataxis	_	_
21	these	this	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	22	det	_	_
22	opposites	opposite	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obj	_	_
23	apart	apart	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | mǎi |  |  |  |  | buy *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | present | mài |  |  |  |  | sell *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* | present | the tone | this opposites |  |  |  | apart *property* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent opposite=Recipient |

<!-- .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: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): 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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