---
title: You can say no politely, like «Thanks, but I can't come», without in… — Why people lie, and what is not a lie · tree and pragmatics
description: You can say no politely, like «Thanks, but I can't come», without inventing an excuse. Who acts: You, I. A sentence of the lesson «Why people lie, and what is not a lie» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/195-why-people-lie/21/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[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/) / [Everyday](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/) / [Why people lie, and what is not a lie](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/195-why-people-lie/) / 21

# Why people lie, and what is not a lie, sentence 21

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
You can say no politely, like «Thanks, but I can't come», without inventing an excuse.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** You, I · **What happens:** say, not come, invent · **To what, where:** excuse · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Why people lie, and what is not a lie» of the everyday 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 (You, I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:195-why-people-lie.lesson:21
# text = You can say no politely, like «Thanks, but I can't come», without inventing an excuse.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 195-why-people-lie.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, R6-punct-agree ×1
1	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	no	no	INTJ	UH	Polarity=Neg	3	discourse	_	_
5	politely	politely	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	like	like	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	_
9	Thanks	thanks	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	discourse	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
11	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
12	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
13	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
14	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	15	advmod	_	_
15	come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	conj	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=3:conj
16	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=15:punct
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
18	without	without	SCONJ	IN	_	19	mark	_	_
19	inventing	invent	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	advcl	_	_
20	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	excuse	excuse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obj	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: suggest
- voice: narrator
- polarity: pos
- teacher: changed act=suggest

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | can | You |  |  |  |  | politely *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **not** **come** *in a quote* | can | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **invent** | gerund | You *not said here* | a excuse |  |  |  |  | vn create-26.4-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent excuse=Result |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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:everyday:195-why-people-lie.lesson:21`.

**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, 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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Why people lie, and what is not a lie, 20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/195-why-people-lie/20/)
- next →: [Why people lie, and what is not a lie, 22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/195-why-people-lie/22/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/195-why-people-lie/)