---
title: "A few sandwiches short of a picnic" (UK) means stupid or a bit mad. — Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes… · tree and pragmatics
description: "A few sandwiches short of a picnic" (UK) means stupid or a bit mad. Who acts: few sandwiches. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes and stupidity and madness» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every 
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/35-mistakes-and-stupidity/13/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Euphemisms](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/) / [Soft words for hard things: failure an…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/35-mistakes-and-stupidity/) / 13

# Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes and stupidity and madness, sentence 13

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"A few sandwiches short of a picnic" (UK) means stupid or a bit mad.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** few sandwiches · **What happens:** mean

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes and stupidity and madness» 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 (few sandwiches), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:035-mistakes-and-stupidity.lesson:13
# text = "A few sandwiches short of a picnic" (UK) means stupid or a bit mad.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 035-mistakes-and-stupidity.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): R5-strong ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	_
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	sandwiches	sandwich	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	_
5	short	short	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:acl
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	picnic	picnic	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=13:obl
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
10	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	11	punct	_	_
11	UK	UK	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	parataxis	_	_
12	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	11	punct	_	_
13	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	stupid	stupid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	xcomp	_	_
15	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	bit	bit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl:unmarked	_	_
18	mad	mad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	conj	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- 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 | **mean** | present | a few sandwiches |  |  |  |  | stupid *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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:035-mistakes-and-stupidity.lesson:13`.

**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): R5-strong ×1, 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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Soft words for hard things: failure an…, 12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/35-mistakes-and-stupidity/12/)
- next →: [Soft words for hard things: failure an…, 14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/35-mistakes-and-stupidity/14/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/35-mistakes-and-stupidity/)