---
title: "Massaging the numbers" means changing data so it looks better than… — Soft words for hard things: lying and honesty an… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Massaging the numbers" means changing data so it looks better than it really is. Who acts: Massaging, data. 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 o
---

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# Soft words for hard things: lying and honesty and drinking and drugs, sentence 15

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"Massaging the numbers" means changing data so it looks better than it really is.

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**Who acts:** Massaging, data · **What happens:** massage, mean, change, look · **To what, where:** numbers, data · **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 (Massaging, data), 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:15
# text = "Massaging the numbers" means changing data so it looks better than it really is.
# 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	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	_
2	Massaging	massage	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	6	csubj	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	numbers	number	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
6	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	changing	change	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	6	xcomp	_	_
8	data	data	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
9	so	so	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	looks	look	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
12	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	11	xcomp	_	_
13	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
15	really	really	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
16	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	_
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **massage** *in a quote* | gerund |  | the numbers |  |  |  |  | vn touch-20-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent number=Experiencer |
| 2 | **mean** | present | Massaging |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **change** *not said to happen* | gerund | Massaging *not said here* | data |  |  |  |  | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent data=Patient |
| 4 | **look** | present | data |  |  |  |  | good *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |

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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:15`.

**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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- next →: [Soft words for hard things: lying and…, 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/29-lying-and-drinking/16/)
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