---
title: For the toilet, people pick a polite name ("lavatory"), a sailor's w… — Soft words for hard things: the toilet and bodil… · tree and pragmatics
description: For the toilet, people pick a polite name ("lavatory"), a sailor's word ("the head") or a joke ("the smallest room"). Who acts: people, sailor. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: the toilet and bodily functions and age and looks» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school w
---

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# Soft words for hard things: the toilet and bodily functions and age and looks, sentence 1

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
For the toilet, people pick a polite name ("lavatory"), a sailor's word ("the head") or a joke ("the smallest room").

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** people, sailor · **What happens:** pick, word · **To what, where:** polite name

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: the toilet and bodily functions and age and looks» 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 (people, sailor), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:008-toilets-and-getting-older.lesson:1
# text = For the toilet, people pick a polite name ("lavatory"), a sailor's word ("the head") or a joke ("the smallest room").
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 008-toilets-and-getting-older.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 ×2, R6-punct-agree ×1
1	For	for	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	toilet	toilet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
5	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
6	pick	pick	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	polite	polite	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	name	name	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
10	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	12	punct	_	_
11	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	_
12	lavatory	lavatory	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	appos	_	_
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	_
14	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	12	punct	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=6:punct
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	sailor	sailor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nmod:poss	_	_
18	's	's	PART	POS	_	17	case	_	_
19	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	conj	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=6:obj
20	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	23	punct	_	_
21	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	23	punct	_	_
22	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	appos	_	_
24	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	23	punct	_	_
25	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	23	punct	_	_
26	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	28	cc	_	_
27	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	28	det	_	_
28	joke	joke	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	conj	_	_
29	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	33	punct	_	_
30	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	33	punct	_	_
31	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	33	det	_	_
32	smallest	small	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	33	amod	_	_
33	room	room	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	28	appos	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=19:appos
34	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	33	punct	_	_
35	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	33	punct	_	_
36	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: narrate
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pick** | present | people | a polite name and a sailor's word or a joke |  |  |  | for the toilet | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP PP.beneficiary»: agent=Agent name=Theme for toilet=Beneficiary |
| 2 | **word** |  | a sailor |  |  |  |  |  | nom word «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .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:008-toilets-and-getting-older.lesson:1`.

**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 ×2, 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/).

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