---
title: "A word in your ear" means a quiet telling-off in private; it is Bri… — Soft words for hard things: rudeness and swearing · tree and pragmatics
description: "A word in your ear" means a quiet telling-off in private; it is British. Who acts: word, off. 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 pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Soft words for hard things: rudeness and swearing, sentence 26

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"A word in your ear" means a quiet telling-off in private; it is British.

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**Who acts:** word, off · **What happens:** mean, be · **To what, where:** quiet telling off

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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 (word, off), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:040-with-all-due-respect.lesson:26
# text = "A word in your ear" means a quiet telling-off in private; it is British.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 040-with-all-due-respect.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): R6-punct-agree ×2, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	_
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
4	in	in	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	ear	ear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=6:punct
8	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
10	quiet	quiet	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
11	telling	telling	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	_
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	13	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=11:punct
13	off	off	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
14	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	private	private	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	nmod	_	_
16	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
18	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
19	British	British	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=8:conj
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** | present | a word in your ear | a quiet telling off |  |  |  | in private | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Pivot off=Theme in private=Attribute |
| 2 | **is** | present | off |  |  |  |  | british *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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:040-with-all-due-respect.lesson:26`.

**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): R6-punct-agree ×2, 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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- ← previous: [Soft words for hard things: rudeness a…, 25](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/40-with-all-due-respect/25/)
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- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/40-with-all-due-respect/)