---
title: Calling someone a "turtle" is an old insult hinting at shame on the… — Words that hurt — what they mean, never to be said · tree and pragmatics
description: Calling someone a "turtle" is an old insult hinting at shame on the person's family; a real turtle at the zoo is fine. Who acts: Calling, old insult, real turtle. A sentence of the lesson «Words that hurt — what they mean, never to be said» of the chinese street course of Mova's primary school with 
---

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# Words that hurt — what they mean, never to be said, sentence 12

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Calling someone a "turtle" is an old insult hinting at shame on the person's family; a real turtle at the zoo is fine.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Calling, old insult, real turtle · **What happens:** call, be, hint · **To what, where:** someone, old insult, shame · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Words that hurt — what they mean, never to be said» 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 (Calling, old insult, real turtle), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:chinese-street:024-words-that-hurt.lesson:12
# text = Calling someone a "turtle" is an old insult hinting at shame on the person's family; a real turtle at the zoo is fine.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = chinese-street
# lesson = 024-words-that-hurt.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): R6-punct-agree ×1
1	Calling	call	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	10	csubj	_	_
2	someone	someone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	1	obj	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	_
5	turtle	turtle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obj	_	_
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
7	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
8	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	insult	insult	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
11	hinting	hint	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	10	acl	_	_
12	at	at	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	shame	shame	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
14	on	on	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nmod:poss	_	_
17	's	's	PART	POS	_	16	case	_	_
18	family	family	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	_
19	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
21	real	real	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	turtle	turtle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	27	nsubj	_	_
23	at	at	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
24	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	25	det	_	_
25	zoo	zoo	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	nmod	_	_
26	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	27	cop	_	_
27	fine	fine	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	parataxis	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=27:punct
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **call** | gerund |  | someone |  |  |  |  | vn dub-29.3.2 «NP V NP NP»: agent=Agent someone=Theme turtle=Result |
| 2 | **is a** | present | Calling | a old insult |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **hint** *speech: other* | gerund | a old insult *not said here* |  |  | shame on the person's family |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **is** | present | a real turtle at the zoo |  |  |  |  | fine *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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:024-words-that-hurt.lesson:12`.

**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. **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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