---
title: Borrowing an author's techniques is good practice; copying their act… — Putting it together: reading and writing like a… · tree and pragmatics
description: Borrowing an author's techniques is good practice; copying their actual words and calling them yours is not. Who acts: Borrowing, copying, techniques. A sentence of the lesson «Putting it together: reading and writing like a writer» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency 
---

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# Putting it together: reading and writing like a writer, sentence 6

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Borrowing an author's techniques is good practice; copying their actual words and calling them yours is not.

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**Who acts:** Borrowing, copying, techniques · **What happens:** borrow, be, copy, call, not be, word · **To what, where:** techniques, good practice, actual words · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Putting it together: reading and writing like a writer» 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 (Borrowing, copying, techniques), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:054-reading-and-writing-like-a-writer.lesson:6
# text = Borrowing an author's techniques is good practice; copying their actual words and calling them yours is not.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 054-reading-and-writing-like-a-writer.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	Borrowing	borrow	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	csubj	_	_
2	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	author	author	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod:poss	_	_
4	's	's	PART	POS	_	3	case	_	_
5	techniques	technique	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	obj	_	_
6	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
7	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	practice	practice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
9	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
10	copying	copy	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	18	csubj	_	_
11	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
12	actual	actual	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	calling	call	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	10	conj	_	_
16	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obj	_	_
17	yours	your	PRON	PRP	Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	obj	_	_
18	is	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	parataxis	_	_
19	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	18	advmod	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **borrow** | gerund |  | a author's techniques |  |  |  |  | vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent technique=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** | present | Borrowing | good practice |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **copy** | gerund |  | techniques's actual words |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent word=Theme |
| 4 | **call** | gerund |  | techniques *= technique* |  |  |  |  | vn dub-29.3.2 «NP V NP NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme your=Result |
| 5 | **not** **be** | present | copying |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 6 | **word** |  | techniques *= technique* |  |  |  |  |  | nom word «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .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:054-reading-and-writing-like-a-writer.lesson:6`.

**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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