---
title: The old rhyme says «i before e except after c». — i before e, silent letters and other famous traps · tree and pragmatics
description: The old rhyme says «i before e except after c». Who acts: old rhyme. A sentence of the lesson «i before e, silent letters and other famous traps» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# i before e, silent letters and other famous traps, sentence 0

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The old rhyme says «i before e except after c».

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**Who acts:** old rhyme · **What happens:** say, e · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «i before e, silent letters and other famous traps» of the english 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 (old rhyme), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:010-i-before-e-silent-letters-and-famous-traps.lesson:0
# text = The old rhyme says «i before e except after c».
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 010-i-before-e-silent-letters-and-famous-traps.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): R7-rel-agree ×1
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	rhyme	rhyme	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	_
6	i	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	before	before	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=8:advmod|HaikuPos=ADV:RB:_
8	e	e	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	_
9	except	except	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	after	after	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	c	c	X	GW	_	8	advmod	_	_
12	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | the old rhyme |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **e** *in a quote* | present | the old rhyme *= rhyme* |  |  |  |  |  | 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.

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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:english:010-i-before-e-silent-letters-and-famous-traps.lesson:0`.

**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): R7-rel-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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