---
title: Finding something true and kind to say is better than both a hurtful… — White lies and kind silence · tree and pragmatics
description: Finding something true and kind to say is better than both a hurtful truth and a big lie. Who acts: Finding. A sentence of the lesson «White lies and kind silence» 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/196-white-lies-and-kind-silence/10/)

<!-- 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/) / [White lies and kind silence](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/196-white-lies-and-kind-silence/) / 10

# White lies and kind silence, sentence 10

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Finding something true and kind to say is better than both a hurtful truth and a big lie.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Finding · **What happens:** find, say, be · **To what, where:** something · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «White lies and kind silence» 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 (Finding), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:196-white-lies-and-kind-silence.lesson:10
# text = Finding something true and kind to say is better than both a hurtful truth and a big lie.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 196-white-lies-and-kind-silence.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): no change
1	Finding	find	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	csubj	_	_
2	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	1	obj	_	_
3	true	true	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	kind	kind	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	conj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	acl	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
9	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
10	than	than	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
11	both	both	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc:preconj	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	hurtful	hurtful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	truth	truth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
17	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	lie	lie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	conj	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **find** | gerund |  | something |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent something=Topic |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive |  | something *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** | present | Finding |  |  |  |  | than a hurtful truth and a big lie; good *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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:196-white-lies-and-kind-silence.lesson:10`.

**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): no change. **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: [White lies and kind silence, 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/196-white-lies-and-kind-silence/9/)
- next →: [White lies and kind silence, 11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/196-white-lies-and-kind-silence/11/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/196-white-lies-and-kind-silence/)