---
title: In Liverpool "boss" means great; in the East Midlands "me duck" is a… — Openings that hook the reader · tree and pragmatics
description: In Liverpool "boss" means great; in the East Midlands "me duck" is a friendly way to address someone. Who acts: boss, me. A sentence of the lesson «Openings that hook the reader» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Openings that hook the reader, sentence 17

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
In Liverpool "boss" means great; in the East Midlands "me duck" is a friendly way to address someone.

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**Who acts:** boss, me · **What happens:** mean, be, address · **To what, where:** Liverpool, friendly way, East Midlands, someone · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Openings that hook the reader» 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 (boss, me), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:040-openings-that-hook-the-reader.lesson:17
# text = In Liverpool "boss" means great; in the East Midlands "me duck" is a friendly way to address someone.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 040-openings-that-hook-the-reader.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): R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	Liverpool	Liverpool	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=4:compound
3	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=2:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:'':_
4	boss	boss	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=6:obl
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
6	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	xcomp	_	_
8	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	East	East	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	_
12	Midlands	Midlands	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	20	obl	_	_
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	_
14	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
15	duck	duck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	flat	_	_
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	15	punct	_	_
17	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	20	cop	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
19	friendly	friendly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	ccomp	_	_
21	to	to	PART	TO	_	22	mark	_	_
22	address	address	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	acl	_	_
23	someone	someone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	22	obj	_	_
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** | present | boss | Liverpool |  |  |  | great *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** | present | me | a friendly way |  | the East Midlands |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **address** | to-infinitive | boss *not said here* |  | someone |  |  |  | vn illustrate-25.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent someone=Destination |

<!-- .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:english:040-openings-that-hook-the-reader.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): R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×1, 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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