---
title: A vivid example: "He's a social drinker" can be a gentle way of sayi… — Soft words for hard things: drinking and drugs · tree and pragmatics
description: A vivid example: "He's a social drinker" can be a gentle way of saying he drinks a lot, perhaps too much. Who acts: addiction, vivid example, gentle way. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: drinking and drugs» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tr
---

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# Soft words for hard things: drinking and drugs, sentence 3

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A vivid example: "He's a social drinker" can be a gentle way of saying he drinks a lot, perhaps too much.

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**Who acts:** addiction, vivid example, gentle way · **What happens:** be, say, drink · **To what, where:** social drinker, gentle way, lot · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: 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 (addiction, vivid example, gentle way), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:030-drinking-and-drugs.lesson:3
# text = A vivid example: "He's a social drinker" can be a gentle way of saying he drinks a lot, perhaps too much.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 030-drinking-and-drugs.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	3	det	_	_
2	vivid	vivid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	example	example	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
4	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	16	punct	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	_
6	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
7	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	social	social	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	drinker	drinker	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
12	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
13	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	cop	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	gentle	gentle	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
17	of	of	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
18	saying	say	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	16	acl	_	_
19	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
20	drinks	drink	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	18	ccomp	_	_
21	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	lot	lot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obj	_	_
23	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	26	punct	_	_
24	perhaps	perhaps	ADV	RB	_	26	advmod	_	_
25	too	too	ADV	RB	_	26	advmod	_	_
26	much	much	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	16	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- hedged: yes
- teacher: changed hedge=1

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | addiction | a social drinker |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is a** | can | a vivid example | a gentle way |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | gerund | a gentle way *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **drink** | present | addiction | a lot |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent lot=Patient |

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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:030-drinking-and-drugs.lesson:3`.

**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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