---
title: When you hear such a word, ask: what really happened, and to whom? — Soft words for hard things: work, firing and the… · tree and pragmatics
description: When you hear such a word, ask: what really happened, and to whom? Who acts: you. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: work, firing and the economy» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Soft words for hard things: work, firing and the economy, sentence 4

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When you hear such a word, ask: what really happened, and to whom?

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** hear, ask, happen · **To what, where:** word · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: work, firing and the economy» of the euphemisms 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:euphemisms:021-work-firing-and-the-economy.lesson:4
# text = When you hear such a word, ask: what really happened, and to whom?
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 021-work-firing-and-the-economy.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 ×1
1	When	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	3	mark	_	_
2	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	hear	hear	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	advcl	_	_
4	such	such	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	6	det:predet	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
8	ask	ask	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	12	punct	_	_
10	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	12	nsubj	_	_
11	really	really	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	happened	happen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
15	to	to	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	whom	whom	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	12	conj	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=12:obj
17	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: wh-question
- act: ask
- voice: none
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hear** | present | you | such word |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer word=Stimulus |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **happen** | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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:euphemisms:021-work-firing-and-the-economy.lesson:4`.

**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 ×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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