---
title: Ask of every official phrase: who is doing what, to whom, and what w… — Soft words for hard things: politics and governm… · tree and pragmatics
description: Ask of every official phrase: who is doing what, to whom, and what would the plain word be? Who acts: you, official phrase. 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 pragmatic
---

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# Soft words for hard things: politics and government spin, sentence 4

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Ask of every official phrase: who is doing what, to whom, and what would the plain word be?

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**Who acts:** you, official phrase · **What happens:** ask, do, be · **To what, where:** official phrase

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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 (you, official phrase), 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:4
# text = Ask of every official phrase: who is doing what, to whom, and what would the plain word be?
# 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): no change
1	Ask	ask	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
3	every	every	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	5	det	_	_
4	official	official	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	phrase	phrase	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
6	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	9	punct	_	_
7	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	9	nsubj	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	doing	do	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	acl	_	_
10	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	9	obj	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	to	to	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	whom	whom	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	1	obl	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
16	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	21	advcl	_	_
17	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
19	plain	plain	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
21	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	parataxis	_	_
22	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	1	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 | **ask** *speech: ask* | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  | of every official phrase | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V PP.recipient how S»: agent=Agent of phrase=Recipient |
| 2 | **do** | present · progressive | every official phrase | every official phrase |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |
| 3 | **be** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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:euphemisms:024-government-spin.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): 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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