---
title: To understand these phrases, ask: is the speaker being gentle, polit… — Soft words for hard things: stupidity and madness · tree and pragmatics
description: To understand these phrases, ask: is the speaker being gentle, polite, or making fun? Who acts: you, speaker. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: stupidity and madness» 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: stupidity and madness, sentence 4

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To understand these phrases, ask: is the speaker being gentle, polite, or making fun?

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**Who acts:** you, speaker · **What happens:** understand, ask, be, make · **To what, where:** phrases, fun · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:036-dim-and-round-the-bend.lesson:4
# text = To understand these phrases, ask: is the speaker being gentle, polite, or making fun?
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 036-dim-and-round-the-bend.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 ×2, R6-punct-agree ×1
1	To	to	PART	TO	_	2	mark	_	_
2	understand	understand	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	advcl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=0:root
3	these	this	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	4	det	_	_
4	phrases	phrase	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	ask	ask	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=2:conj
7	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	6	punct	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	speaker	speaker	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
11	being	be	AUX	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	12	cop	_	_
12	gentle	gentle	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	ccomp	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
14	polite	polite	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	conj	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
16	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	making	make	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	12	conj	_	_
18	fun	fun	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	_
19	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=17:punct
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: yes/no question
- act: ask
- 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 | **understand** | to-infinitive | you *not said here* | this phrases |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer phrase=Stimulus |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** | present · progressive | the speaker |  |  |  |  | gentle *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **be** |  | the speaker *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 5 | **make** | gerund | the speaker *not said here* | fun |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset fun=Product |

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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:036-dim-and-round-the-bend.lesson:4`.

**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 ×2, R6-punct-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/).

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