---
title: Sometimes the soft word is fair and polite; often it is spin that hi… — Soft words for hard things: politics and governm… · tree and pragmatics
description: Sometimes the soft word is fair and polite; often it is spin that hides who did what, and to whom. Who acts: soft word, it, spin. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: politics and government spin» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pra
---

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# Soft words for hard things: politics and government spin, sentence 1

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Sometimes the soft word is fair and polite; often it is spin that hides who did what, and to whom.

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**Who acts:** soft word, it, spin · **What happens:** be, hide, do · **To what, where:** spin

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: politics and government spin» 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 (soft word, it, spin), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:024-government-spin.lesson:1
# text = Sometimes the soft word is fair and polite; often it is spin that hides who did what, and to whom.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 024-government-spin.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	Sometimes	sometimes	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	6	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	fair	fair	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	polite	polite	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	conj	_	_
9	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	_
10	often	often	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
13	spin	spin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=6:conj
14	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	15	nsubj	_	_
15	hides	hide	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	acl:relcl	_	_
16	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	17	nsubj	_	_
17	did	do	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	ccomp	_	_
18	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	17	obj	_	_
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
21	to	to	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	whom	whom	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	17	obl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | the soft word |  |  |  |  | fair, sometimes *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | the soft word *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **is a** | present | it | spin |  |  |  | often *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **hide** | present | spin |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 5 | **do** | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |

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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:024-government-spin.lesson:1`.

**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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