---
title: "A bit dim" means rather stupid; it is everyday British English and… — Soft words for hard things: stupidity and madness · tree and pragmatics
description: "A bit dim" means rather stupid; it is everyday British English and sounds softer than "stupid". Who acts: 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 clau
---

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# Soft words for hard things: stupidity and madness, sentence 5

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"A bit dim" means rather stupid; it is everyday British English and sounds softer than "stupid".

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**Who acts:** speaker · **What happens:** mean, be, sound · **To what, where:** stupid, everyday British English

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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 (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:5
# text = "A bit dim" means rather stupid; it is everyday British English and sounds softer than "stupid".
# 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): R7-rel-agree ×3
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	_
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	bit	bit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl:unmarked	_	_
4	dim	dim	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
6	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
7	rather	rather	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	stupid	stupid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	obj	_	_
9	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
11	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
12	everyday	everyday	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=14:advmod|HaikuPos=ADV:RB:_
13	British	British	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	English	English	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	parataxis	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
16	sounds	sound	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	conj	_	_
17	softer	soft	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	16	xcomp	_	_
18	than	than	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=20:mark|HaikuPos=SCONJ:IN:_
19	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	20	punct	_	_
20	stupid	stupid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	obl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=17:conj
21	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	20	punct	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** | present |  | stupid |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent stupid=Topic |
| 2 | **is a** | present | speaker | everyday British English |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **sound** | present | speaker *not said here* |  |  |  |  | soft *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:036-dim-and-round-the-bend.lesson:5`.

**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): R7-rel-agree ×3. **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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