---
title: A "fish story" is a US phrase for an exaggerated or invented claim. — Soft words for hard things: lying and honesty an… · tree and pragmatics
description: A "fish story" is a US phrase for an exaggerated or invented claim. Who acts: fish 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 16

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A "fish story" is a US phrase for an exaggerated or invented claim.

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**Who acts:** fish story · **What happens:** be, exaggerate, invent · **To what, where:** US phrase

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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 (fish 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:16
# text = A "fish story" is a US phrase for an exaggerated or invented claim.
# 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	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
2	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	_
3	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
6	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	US	US	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
9	phrase	phrase	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
10	for	for	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
11	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
12	exaggerated	exaggerate	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	15	amod	_	_
13	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	invented	invent	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	12	conj	_	_
15	claim	claim	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | a fish story | a US phrase |  |  |  | for a exaggerated claim | tree rules |
| 2 | **exaggerate** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **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:16`.

**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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