---
title: "Distinguished" said of an older man often means grey-haired or olde… — Soft words for hard things: age and looks and we… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Distinguished" said of an older man often means grey-haired or older-looking, in a good way. 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 tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Soft words for hard things: age and looks and weight, sentence 18

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"Distinguished" said of an older man often means grey-haired or older-looking, in a good way.

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**What happens:** say, mean, look · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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: 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:18
# text = "Distinguished" said of an older man often means grey-haired or older-looking, in a good way.
# 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, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	_
2	Distinguished	distinguished	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	ccomp	_	_
3	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
4	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	older	old	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	8	amod	_	_
8	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
9	often	often	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	_
11	grey	grey	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	11	punct	_	_
13	haired	haired	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	conj	_	_
14	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	older	old	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	13	parataxis	_	_
16	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	17	punct	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=17:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:,:_
17	looking	look	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	13	conj	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=10:conj
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
19	in	in	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
21	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed form=decl, act=assert, voice=narrator

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  |  | of a older man | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **mean** | present |  |  |  |  |  | often *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **look** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  | in a good way | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent in way=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:009-age-looks-and-size.lesson:18`.

**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, 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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