---
title: To "spin a yarn" means to tell an invented story. — Soft words for hard things: lying and honesty an… · tree and pragmatics
description: To "spin a yarn" means to tell an invented story. Who acts: invented story. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: lying and honesty and drinking and drugs» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Soft words for hard things: lying and honesty and drinking and drugs, sentence 11

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
To "spin a yarn" means to tell an invented story.

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**Who acts:** invented story · **What happens:** spin, mean, tell, invent · **To what, where:** yarn · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: lying and honesty and drinking and drugs» 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 (invented story), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:029-lying-and-drinking.lesson:11
# text = To "spin a yarn" means to tell an invented story.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 029-lying-and-drinking.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	To	to	PART	TO	_	3	mark	_	_
2	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	_
3	spin	spin	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	csubj	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	yarn	yarn	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
7	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	xcomp	_	_
10	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	invented	invent	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	12	amod	_	_
12	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed act=assert

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **spin** *in a quote* | to-infinitive |  | a yarn |  |  |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent yarn=Theme |
| 2 | **mean** | present |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | a invented story |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **invent** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn create-26.4-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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:029-lying-and-drinking.lesson:11`.

**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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