---
title: "Plausible deniability" means an arrangement that lets leaders deny… — Soft words for hard things: politics and governm… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Plausible deniability" means an arrangement that lets leaders deny they knew about something. Who acts: Plausible deniability, arrangement, leaders. 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 depende
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/24-government-spin/6/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Euphemisms](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/) / [Soft words for hard things: politics a…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/24-government-spin/) / 6

# Soft words for hard things: politics and government spin, sentence 6

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Plausible deniability" means an arrangement that lets leaders deny they knew about something.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Plausible deniability, arrangement, leaders · **What happens:** mean, let, deny, know · **To what, where:** arrangement, leaders

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (Plausible deniability, arrangement, leaders), 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:6
# text = "Plausible deniability" means an arrangement that lets leaders deny they knew about something.
# 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	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	_
2	Plausible	plausible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	deniability	deniability	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
5	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	arrangement	arrangement	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	9	nsubj	_	_
9	lets	let	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	acl:relcl	_	_
10	leaders	leader	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	_
11	deny	deny	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	knew	know	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	ccomp	_	_
14	about	about	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	13	obl	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	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 | **mean** | present | Plausible deniability | a arrangement |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent arrangement=Topic |
| 2 | **let** | present | a arrangement | leaders |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **deny** | infinitive | leaders *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn conjecture-29.5 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 4 | **know** | past | leaders *= leader* |  |  |  |  | about something | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V PP.stimulus»: agent=Experiencer about something=Stimulus |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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: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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Soft words for hard things: politics a…, 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/24-government-spin/5/)
- next →: [Soft words for hard things: politics a…, 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/24-government-spin/7/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/24-government-spin/)