---
title: A white lie is a small kind lie to spare feelings, such as praising… — Olympiad: the euphemism detective ★★★ · tree and pragmatics
description: A white lie is a small kind lie to spare feelings, such as praising a present you do not like. Who acts: white lie, you. A sentence of the lesson «Olympiad: the euphemism detective ★★★» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Olympiad: the euphemism detective ★★★, sentence 24

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A white lie is a small kind lie to spare feelings, such as praising a present you do not like.

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**Who acts:** white lie, you · **What happens:** be, spare, praise, not like · **To what, where:** small kind lie, feelings, present

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Olympiad: the euphemism detective ★★★» 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 (white lie, you), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:041-olympiad-euphemism-detective.lesson:24
# text = A white lie is a small kind lie to spare feelings, such as praising a present you do not like.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 041-olympiad-euphemism-detective.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	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	lie	lie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
4	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
6	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
7	kind	kind	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=8:amod|HaikuPos=ADJ:JJ:Degree=Pos
8	lie	lie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	spare	spare	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	acl	_	_
11	feelings	feeling	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	such	such	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|ExtPos=SCONJ	15	mark	_	_
14	as	as	ADP	IN	_	13	fixed	_	_
15	praising	praise	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	11	conj	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	present	present	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	_
18	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
19	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	21	aux	_	_
20	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	21	advmod	_	_
21	like	like	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	acl:relcl	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	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 | a white lie | a small kind lie |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **spare** | to-infinitive |  | feelings |  |  |  |  | vn bill-54.5 «NP V NP NP.asset»: agent=Agent feeling=Asset |
| 3 | **praise** | gerund |  | a present |  |  |  |  | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent present=Theme |
| 4 | **not** **like** | present · do-support | you | a present *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot present=Theme |

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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:041-olympiad-euphemism-detective.lesson:24`.

**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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- ← previous: [Olympiad: the euphemism detective ★★★, 22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/41-olympiad-euphemism-detective/22/)
- next →: [Olympiad: reading between the lines ★★★, 0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/42-olympiad-reading-between-the-lines/0/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/41-olympiad-euphemism-detective/)