--- title: "Show, don't tell" means letting actions, body language and details… — Describing: senses, showing and precise words · tree and pragmatics description: "Show, don't tell" means letting actions, body language and details show a feeling instead of naming it. Who acts: Show, actions. A sentence of the lesson «Describing: senses, showing and precise words» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of eve --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/9/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/) / [Describing: senses, showing and precis…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/) / 9 # Describing: senses, showing and precise words, sentence 9 "Show, don't tell" means letting actions, body language and details show a feeling instead of naming it. **Who acts:** Show, actions · **What happens:** not tell, mean, let, show, name · **To what, where:** feeling · **Speech:** someone speaks here This is a sentence of the lesson «Describing: senses, showing and precise words» 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 (Show, actions), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree. ## The tree {#tree} ```conllu # sent_id = school:english:041-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words.lesson:9 # text = "Show, don't tell" means letting actions, body language and details show a feeling instead of naming it. # source = school lesson (ours) # course = english # lesson = 041-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words.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 ×2 1 " " PUNCT `` _ 2 punct _ _ 2 Show show NOUN NN Number=Sing 8 nsubj _ _ 3 , , PUNCT , _ 6 punct _ _ 4 do do AUX VB Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin 6 aux _ _ 5 n't not PART RB Polarity=Neg 6 advmod _ _ 6 tell tell VERB VB VerbForm=Inf 2 parataxis _ Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=2:acl 7 " " PUNCT '' _ 6 punct _ _ 8 means mean VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 0 root _ _ 9 letting let VERB VBG VerbForm=Ger 8 csubj _ _ 10 actions action NOUN NNS Number=Plur 16 nsubj _ _ 11 , , PUNCT , _ 13 punct _ _ 12 body body NOUN NN Number=Sing 13 compound _ _ 13 language language NOUN NN Number=Sing 10 conj _ Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=10:nmod 14 and and CCONJ CC _ 15 cc _ _ 15 details detail NOUN NNS Number=Plur 13 conj _ _ 16 show show VERB VBP Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 9 ccomp _ _ 17 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 18 det _ _ 18 feeling feeling NOUN NN Number=Sing 16 obj _ _ 19 instead instead ADV RB ExtPos=SCONJ 21 mark _ _ 20 of of ADP IN _ 19 fixed _ _ 21 naming name VERB VBG VerbForm=Ger 16 advcl _ _ 22 it it PRON PRP Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs 21 obj _ _ 23 . . PUNCT . _ 8 punct _ _ ``` ## Pragmatics {#pragmatics} - form: statement - act: assert - voice: narrator - polarity: none - teacher: kept the draft | # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | **not** **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | infinitive · do-support | | | | | | | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | | 2 | **mean** | present | Show | | | | | | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent | | 3 | **let** | gerund | | | | | | | tree rules | | 4 | **show** | present | actions and body language and details | a feeling | | | | | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent feeling=Recipient | | 5 | **name** | gerund | actions and body language and details *not said here* | feeling | | | | | vn appoint-29.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme | 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. **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:041-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words.lesson:9`. **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 ×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/). - ← previous: [Describing: senses, showing and precis…, 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/8/) - next →: [Describing: senses, showing and precis…, 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/10/) - ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/)