---
title: "Show, don't tell" means showing a feeling through actions and detai… — Putting it together: reading and writing like a… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Show, don't tell" means showing a feeling through actions and details: "her hands shook" shows fear. Who acts: Show, hands. 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 tree and the pragmatics of
---

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# Putting it together: reading and writing like a writer, sentence 9

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Show, don't tell" means showing a feeling through actions and details: "her hands shook" shows fear.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Show, hands · **What happens:** not tell, mean, show, shake · **To what, where:** feeling, actions, fear · **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 (Show, hands), 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:9
# text = "Show, don't tell" means showing a feeling through actions and details: "her hands shook" shows fear.
# 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): 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	showing	show	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	xcomp	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=8:ccomp
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	feeling	feeling	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	through	through	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	actions	action	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nmod	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	details	detail	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	conj	_	_
16	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	8	punct	_	_
17	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	20	punct	_	_
18	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	19	nmod:poss	_	_
19	hands	hand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nsubj	_	_
20	shook	shake	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	22	csubj	_	_
21	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	20	punct	_	_
22	shows	show	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
23	fear	fear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	obj	_	_
24	.	.	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 | **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 clause=Topic |
| 3 | **show** *not said to happen* | gerund | Show *not said here* | a feeling |  | actions and details |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent feeling=Recipient |
| 4 | **shake** *in a quote* | past | Show's hands |  |  |  |  |  | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Patient |
| 5 | **show** | present | Show *not said here* | fear |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent fear=Recipient |

<!-- .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: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/).

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