---
title: A rhetorical question is asked for effect and doesn't expect an answ… — Persuasive letters, newspaper articles and diaries · tree and pragmatics
description: A rhetorical question is asked for effect and doesn't expect an answer, like «Surely you agree?» Who acts: you. A sentence of the lesson «Persuasive letters, newspaper articles and diaries» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Persuasive letters, newspaper articles and diaries, sentence 17

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A rhetorical question is asked for effect and doesn't expect an answer, like «Surely you agree?»

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** ask, not expect, agree · **To what, where:** rhetorical question, answer · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Persuasive letters, newspaper articles and diaries» 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 (you), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:024-persuasive-letters-newspaper-articles-and-diaries.lesson:17
# text = A rhetorical question is asked for effect and doesn't expect an answer, like «Surely you agree?»
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 024-persuasive-letters-newspaper-articles-and-diaries.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): R8-pos-agree ×2
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	rhetorical	rhetorical	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	question	question	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj:pass	_	_
4	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux:pass	_	_
5	asked	ask	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
6	for	for	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	effect	effect	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	does	do	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	expect	expect	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
12	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	answer	answer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
15	like	like	ADP	IN	_	19	mark	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=19:mark|HaikuPos=SCONJ:IN:_
16	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	19	punct	_	_
17	Surely	surely	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
18	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
19	agree	agree	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	parataxis	_	_
20	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
21	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=5:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:.:_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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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 | **ask** *speech: ask* | present · passive |  | a rhetorical question |  |  |  | for effect | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: subject=Recipient |
| 2 | **not** **expect** | present · do-support |  | a answer |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **agree** *speech: agree* *in a quote* | present | you |  |  |  |  | surely *property* | vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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:024-persuasive-letters-newspaper-articles-and-diaries.lesson:17`.

**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): R8-pos-agree ×2. **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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