---
title: If you have told a harmful lie, the bravest and best thing is to tel… — Lies that do real harm · tree and pragmatics
description: If you have told a harmful lie, the bravest and best thing is to tell the truth quickly, before the harm grows. Who acts: you, harm. A sentence of the lesson «Lies that do real harm» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Lies that do real harm, sentence 7

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If you have told a harmful lie, the bravest and best thing is to tell the truth quickly, before the harm grows.

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**Who acts:** you, harm · **What happens:** tell, be, grow · **To what, where:** harmful lie, bravest thing, truth · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Lies that do real harm» 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, harm), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:197-harmful-lies.lesson:7
# text = If you have told a harmful lie, the bravest and best thing is to tell the truth quickly, before the harm grows.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 197-harmful-lies.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 ×1
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	4	mark	_	_
2	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	told	tell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	13	advcl	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	harmful	harmful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	lie	lie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
10	bravest	brave	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	13	amod	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	best	good	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	10	conj	_	_
13	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
14	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	truth	truth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	_
19	quickly	quickly	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
21	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	24	mark	_	_
22	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	harm	harm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	nsubj	_	_
24	grows	grow	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	advcl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=16:parataxis
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* *a condition, not said to happen* | present · perfect | you | a harmful lie |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent lie=Recipient |
| 2 | **is a** | present |  | the bravest thing |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive |  | the truth |  |  |  | quickly *property* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent truth=Recipient |
| 4 | **grow** | present | the harm |  |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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.

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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:197-harmful-lies.lesson:7`.

**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 ×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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