---
title: Families decide how to handle traditions like the tooth fairy or Fat… — White lies and kind silence · tree and pragmatics
description: Families decide how to handle traditions like the tooth fairy or Father Christmas, so do not spoil them for younger children. Who acts: Families. 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 ever
---

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# White lies and kind silence, sentence 17

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Families decide how to handle traditions like the tooth fairy or Father Christmas, so do not spoil them for younger children.

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**Who acts:** Families · **What happens:** decide, handle, not spoil · **To what, where:** traditions · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Families), 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:17
# text = Families decide how to handle traditions like the tooth fairy or Father Christmas, so do not spoil them for younger children.
# 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): R7-rel-agree ×2
1	Families	family	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
2	decide	decide	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	handle	handle	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	ccomp	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=2:xcomp
6	traditions	tradition	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	_
7	like	like	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	tooth	tooth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	_
10	fairy	fairy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
11	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	Father	Father	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	appos	_	_
13	Christmas	Christmas	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	flat	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
15	so	so	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=18:cc|HaikuPos=CCONJ:CC:_
16	do	do	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	aux	_	_
17	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	18	advmod	_	_
18	spoil	spoil	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
19	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	obj	_	_
20	for	for	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	younger	young	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	22	amod	_	_
22	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	obl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	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 | **decide** | present | Families |  |  |  |  |  | vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **handle** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive |  | traditions |  |  |  | like the tooth fairy | vn hold-15.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tradition=Theme |
| 3 | **not** **spoil** | infinitive · do-support | Families *not said here* | traditions *= tradition* |  |  |  | for younger children | tree rules |

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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:everyday:196-white-lies-and-kind-silence.lesson:17`.

**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): R7-rel-agree ×2. **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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