---
title: "Telling stories" is what British adults say to a child who is lying. — Soft words for hard things: crime, prison and th… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Telling stories" is what British adults say to a child who is lying. Who acts: Telling, British adults, child. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: crime, prison and the police and lying and honesty» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/28-stealing-and-lying/21/)

<!-- 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: crime, pri…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/28-stealing-and-lying/) / 21

# Soft words for hard things: crime, prison and the police and lying and honesty, sentence 21

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Telling stories" is what British adults say to a child who is lying.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Telling, British adults, child · **What happens:** tell, be, say, lie · **To what, where:** stories, child · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: crime, prison and the police and lying and honesty» 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 (Telling, British adults, child), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:028-stealing-and-lying.lesson:21
# text = "Telling stories" is what British adults say to a child who is lying.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 028-stealing-and-lying.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): R6-punct-agree ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	_
2	Telling	tell	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	csubj	_	_
3	stories	story	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
4	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	0	root	_	_
7	British	British	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	adults	adult	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
9	say	say	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	acl:relcl	_	_
10	to	to	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
13	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	15	nsubj	_	_
14	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	lying	lie	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	12	acl:relcl	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=9:punct
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed voice=narrator

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | gerund |  | stories |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent story=Recipient |
| 2 | **is a** | present | Telling |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | British adults |  | a child |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to child=Recipient |
| 4 | **lie** | present · progressive | a child |  |  |  |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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:028-stealing-and-lying.lesson:21`.

**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): R6-punct-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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Soft words for hard things: crime, pri…, 20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/28-stealing-and-lying/20/)
- next →: [Soft words for hard things: crime, pri…, 22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/28-stealing-and-lying/22/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/28-stealing-and-lying/)