---
title: "Fell off the back of a lorry" is a British joke meaning the goods w… — Soft words for hard things: crime, prison and th… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Fell off the back of a lorry" is a British joke meaning the goods were stolen. Who acts: Fell, British joke. 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 p
---

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# Soft words for hard things: crime, prison and the police and lying and honesty, sentence 7

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Fell off the back of a lorry" is a British joke meaning the goods were stolen.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Fell, British joke · **What happens:** be, mean, steal · **To what, where:** British joke, goods · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Fell, British joke), 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:7
# text = "Fell off the back of a lorry" is a British joke meaning the goods were stolen.
# 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 ×2, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	_
2	Fell	Fell	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
3	off	off	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	back	back	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=2:nmod
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	lorry	lorry	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=8:punct
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	British	British	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	joke	joke	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
14	meaning	mean	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	13	acl	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	goods	goods	NOUN	NNS	Number=Ptan	18	nsubj:pass	_	_
17	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	aux:pass	_	_
18	stolen	steal	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	14	ccomp	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=18:punct
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | Fell | a British joke |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **mean** | gerund | a British joke *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **steal** | past · passive |  | the goods |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: subject=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:028-stealing-and-lying.lesson:7`.

**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 ×2, 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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