---
title: "Some choice words" means swear words or insults, as in "she had som… — Soft words for hard things: rudeness and swearing · tree and pragmatics
description: "Some choice words" means swear words or insults, as in "she had some choice words for the referee". Who acts: choice words, Effing. 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 pragmat
---

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# Soft words for hard things: rudeness and swearing, sentence 23

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Some choice words" means swear words or insults, as in "she had some choice words for the referee".

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** choice words, Effing · **What happens:** mean, have · **To what, where:** swear words, choice words · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (choice words, Effing), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:039-pardon-my-french.lesson:23
# text = "Some choice words" means swear words or insults, as in "she had some choice words for the referee".
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 039-pardon-my-french.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 ×2
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	_
2	Some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	4	det	_	_
3	choice	choice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:amod|HaikuPos=ADJ:JJ:Degree=Pos
4	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
6	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	swear	swear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	_
8	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	_
9	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	insults	insult	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	conj	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
12	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
13	in	in	SCONJ	IN	_	12	fixed	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=16:mark
14	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	16	punct	_	_
15	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	parataxis	_	_
17	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	19	det	_	_
18	choice	choice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	compound	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=19:amod|HaikuPos=ADJ:JJ:Degree=Pos
19	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	obj	_	_
20	for	for	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	referee	referee	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nmod	_	_
23	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	16	punct	_	_
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- 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 | **mean** | present | some choice words | swear words or insults |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** *in a quote* | past | Effing | some choice words |  |  |  | for the referee | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent word=Patient |

<!-- .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.

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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:039-pardon-my-french.lesson:23`.

**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 ×2. **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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