---
title: "Son of a gun" is an American soft form of a much ruder insult; it c… — Soft words for hard things: rudeness and swearing · tree and pragmatics
description: "Son of a gun" is an American soft form of a much ruder insult; it can show annoyance or even friendly surprise. Who acts: Son, insult. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: rudeness and swearing» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the prag
---

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# Soft words for hard things: rudeness and swearing, sentence 15

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"Son of a gun" is an American soft form of a much ruder insult; it can show annoyance or even friendly surprise.

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**Who acts:** Son, insult · **What happens:** be, show · **To what, where:** American soft form, annoyance

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

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:038-drat-and-the-f-word.lesson:15
# text = "Son of a gun" is an American soft form of a much ruder insult; it can show annoyance or even friendly surprise.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 038-drat-and-the-f-word.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 ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	_
2	Son	Son	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	gun	gun	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
7	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
8	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
9	American	American	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
10	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=11:compound|HaikuPos=NOUN:NN:Number=Sing
11	form	form	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
14	much	much	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	15	advmod	_	_
15	ruder	ruder	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	16	amod	_	_
16	insult	insult	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
17	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
18	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
19	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
20	show	show	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	parataxis	_	_
21	annoyance	annoyance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obj	_	_
22	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	25	cc	_	_
23	even	even	ADV	RB	_	25	advmod	_	_
24	friendly	friendly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	25	amod	_	_
25	surprise	surprise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	conj	_	_
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	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 | **is a** | present | Son of a gun | a American soft form |  |  |  | of a ruder insult | tree rules |
| 2 | **show** | can | insult | annoyance or friendly surprise |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent annoyance=Recipient |

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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:038-drat-and-the-f-word.lesson:15`.

**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 ×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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