--- title: "Flip the bird" means raise the middle finger as an insult; it is Am… — Soft words for hard things: rudeness and swearing · tree and pragmatics description: "Flip the bird" means raise the middle finger as an insult; it is American slang. Who acts: finger. 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. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/40-with-all-due-respect/9/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Euphemisms](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/) / [Soft words for hard things: rudeness a…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/40-with-all-due-respect/) / 9 # Soft words for hard things: rudeness and swearing, sentence 9 "Flip the bird" means raise the middle finger as an insult; it is American slang. **Who acts:** finger · **What happens:** flip, mean, raise, be · **To what, where:** bird, middle finger, American slang · **Speech:** someone speaks here 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 (finger), 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:9 # text = "Flip the bird" means raise the middle finger as an insult; it is American slang. # 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 ×1 1 " " PUNCT `` _ 2 punct _ _ 2 Flip flip VERB VB Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin 6 nsubj _ _ 3 the the DET DT Definite=Def|PronType=Art 4 det _ _ 4 bird bird NOUN NN Number=Sing 2 obj _ _ 5 " " PUNCT '' _ 2 punct _ Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=4:punct 6 means mean VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 0 root _ _ 7 raise raise VERB VB VerbForm=Inf 6 ccomp _ _ 8 the the DET DT Definite=Def|PronType=Art 10 det _ _ 9 middle middle ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 10 amod _ _ 10 finger finger NOUN NN Number=Sing 7 obj _ _ 11 as as ADP IN _ 13 case _ _ 12 an a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 13 det _ _ 13 insult insult NOUN NN Number=Sing 7 obl _ _ 14 ; ; PUNCT , _ 18 punct _ _ 15 it it PRON PRP Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs 18 nsubj _ _ 16 is be AUX VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 18 cop _ _ 17 American American ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 18 amod _ _ 18 slang slang NOUN NN Number=Sing 6 parataxis _ _ 19 . . PUNCT . _ 6 punct _ _ ``` ## Pragmatics {#pragmatics} - form: statement - act: assert - voice: narrator - polarity: none - teacher: changed act=assert | # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | **flip** *in a quote* | infinitive | | the bird | | | | | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bird=Theme | | 2 | **mean** | present | | | | | | | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | | 3 | **raise** | infinitive | | the middle finger | | | | as a insult | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent finger=Theme | | 4 | **is a** | present | finger | American slang | | | | | tree rules | 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. **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:9`. **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 ×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/). - ← previous: [Soft words for hard things: rudeness a…, 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/40-with-all-due-respect/8/) - next →: [Soft words for hard things: rudeness a…, 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/40-with-all-due-respect/10/) - ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/40-with-all-due-respect/)