--- title: Kind words soften the truth: wrinkles become "laughter lines" and a… — Soft words for hard things: age and looks and we… · tree and pragmatics description: Kind words soften the truth: wrinkles become "laughter lines" and a balding man is "thinning on top". Who acts: Kind words, wrinkles, balding man. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: age and looks and weight» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tre --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/9-age-looks-and-size/1/) [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: age and lo…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/9-age-looks-and-size/) / 1 # Soft words for hard things: age and looks and weight, sentence 1 Kind words soften the truth: wrinkles become "laughter lines" and a balding man is "thinning on top". **Who acts:** Kind words, wrinkles, balding man · **What happens:** soften, become, bald, thin · **To what, where:** truth, laughter lines, top This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: age and looks and weight» 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 (Kind words, wrinkles, balding man), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree. ## The tree {#tree} ```conllu # sent_id = school:euphemisms:009-age-looks-and-size.lesson:1 # text = Kind words soften the truth: wrinkles become "laughter lines" and a balding man is "thinning on top". # source = school lesson (ours) # course = euphemisms # lesson = 009-age-looks-and-size.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 ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1 1 Kind kind ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 2 amod _ _ 2 words word NOUN NNS Number=Plur 3 nsubj _ _ 3 soften soften VERB VBP Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 0 root _ _ 4 the the DET DT Definite=Def|PronType=Art 5 det _ _ 5 truth truth NOUN NN Number=Sing 3 obj _ _ 6 : : PUNCT : _ 8 punct _ _ 7 wrinkles wrinkle NOUN NNS Number=Plur 8 nsubj _ _ 8 become become VERB VBP Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 3 parataxis _ Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=3:conj 9 " " PUNCT `` _ 11 punct _ _ 10 laughter laughter NOUN NN Number=Sing 11 compound _ _ 11 lines line NOUN NNS Number=Plur 8 xcomp _ _ 12 " " PUNCT '' _ 11 punct _ _ 13 and and CCONJ CC _ 19 cc _ _ 14 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 16 det _ _ 15 balding bald VERB VBG VerbForm=Ger 16 amod _ _ 16 man man NOUN NN Number=Sing 19 nsubj _ _ 17 is be AUX VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 19 aux _ _ 18 " " PUNCT `` _ 19 punct _ _ 19 thinning thin VERB VBG Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part 8 conj _ Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=11:conj 20 on on ADP IN _ 21 case _ _ 21 top top NOUN NN Number=Sing 19 obl _ _ 22 " " PUNCT '' _ 19 punct _ _ 23 . . PUNCT . _ 3 punct _ _ ``` ## Pragmatics {#pragmatics} - form: statement - act: narrate - voice: narrator - polarity: none - teacher: kept the draft | # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | **soften** | present | Kind words | the truth | | | | | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent truth=Patient | | 2 | **become** | present | wrinkles | laughter lines | | | | | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient | | 3 | **bald** | gerund | | | | | | | tree rules | | 4 | **thin** *in a quote* | present · progressive | a balding man | | | top | | | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient | 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:009-age-looks-and-size.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 ×1, 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/). - ← previous: [Soft words for hard things: age and lo…, 0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/9-age-looks-and-size/0/) - next →: [Soft words for hard things: age and lo…, 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/9-age-looks-and-size/2/) - ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/9-age-looks-and-size/)