---
title: Quotation marks around a word can show that it isn't meant literally… — Reading a story: characters, plot and setting · tree and pragmatics
description: Quotation marks around a word can show that it isn't meant literally, like «by accident» when it was on purpose. Who acts: Quotation marks, fable. A sentence of the lesson «Reading a story: characters, plot and setting» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the 
---

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# Reading a story: characters, plot and setting, sentence 25

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Quotation marks around a word can show that it isn't meant literally, like «by accident» when it was on purpose.

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**Who acts:** Quotation marks, fable · **What happens:** show, not mean, be · **To what, where:** fable, purpose · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Reading a story: characters, plot and setting» 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 (Quotation marks, fable), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:022-reading-a-story-characters-plot-and-setting.lesson:25
# text = Quotation marks around a word can show that it isn't meant literally, like «by accident» when it was on purpose.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 022-reading-a-story-characters-plot-and-setting.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	Quotation	quotation	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	compound	_	_
2	marks	mark	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
3	around	around	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
6	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	show	show	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj:pass	_	_
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux:pass	_	_
11	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	12	advmod	_	_
12	meant	mean	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	7	ccomp	_	_
13	literally	literally	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
15	like	like	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
16	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	18	punct	_	_
17	by	by	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	accident	accident	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
19	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	18	punct	_	_
20	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	24	advmod	_	_
21	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	24	nsubj	_	_
22	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	24	cop	_	_
23	on	on	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
24	purpose	purpose	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	conj	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **show** | can | Quotation marks around a word |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **not** **mean** | present · passive |  | fable |  |  |  | like accident and purpose; literally *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Topic |
| 3 | **is** | past | fable |  |  | purpose |  |  | 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:022-reading-a-story-characters-plot-and-setting.lesson:25`.

**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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