---
title: "Be sick" in British English means vomit, not just feel ill. — Soft words for hard things: the toilet and bodil… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Be sick" in British English means vomit, not just feel ill. Who acts: sick. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: the toilet and bodily functions» 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: the toilet and bodily functions, sentence 16

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"Be sick" in British English means vomit, not just feel ill.

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**Who acts:** sick · **What happens:** be, mean, not feel · **To what, where:** vomit · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:007-wind-sick-and-runs.lesson:16
# text = "Be sick" in British English means vomit, not just feel ill.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 007-wind-sick-and-runs.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): R8-pos-agree ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	_
2	Be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	cop	_	_
3	sick	sick	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	nsubj	_	_
4	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	British	British	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=7:amod|HaikuPos=ADJ:NNP:Degree=Pos
7	English	English	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
8	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	vomit	vomit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
12	just	just	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	feel	feel	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	conj	_	_
14	ill	ill	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	xcomp	_	_
15	.	.	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** *in a quote* | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | sick *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **mean** | present | sick | vomit |  |  |  | in British English | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Pivot vomit=Theme in english=Attribute |
| 3 | **not** **feel** | infinitive | sick *not said here* |  |  |  |  | ill *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |

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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:007-wind-sick-and-runs.lesson:16`.

**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): R8-pos-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: the toilet…, 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/7-wind-sick-and-runs/15/)
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