---
title: Lie-detector machines (polygraphs) measure nervousness, like heartbe… — Telling when someone may be lying · tree and pragmatics
description: Lie-detector machines (polygraphs) measure nervousness, like heartbeat and sweat, and honest people get nervous too, so they are not reliable. Who acts: detector machines, honest people, people. A sentence of the lesson «Telling when someone may be lying» of the everyday course of Mova's primary sch
---

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# Telling when someone may be lying, sentence 15

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Lie-detector machines (polygraphs) measure nervousness, like heartbeat and sweat, and honest people get nervous too, so they are not reliable.

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**Who acts:** detector machines, honest people, people · **What happens:** measure, get, not be · **To what, where:** nervousness

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Telling when someone may be lying» 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 (detector machines, honest people, people), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:198-telling-when-someone-may-be-lying.lesson:15
# text = Lie-detector machines (polygraphs) measure nervousness, like heartbeat and sweat, and honest people get nervous too, so they are not reliable.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 198-telling-when-someone-may-be-lying.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	Lie	lie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
2	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	4	punct	_	_
3	detector	detector	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	machines	machine	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
5	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	6	punct	_	_
6	polygraphs	polygraph	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	appos	_	_
7	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	6	punct	_	_
8	measure	measure	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	nervousness	nervousness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	like	like	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	heartbeat	heartbeat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	sweat	sweat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	conj	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
17	honest	honest	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	nsubj	_	_
19	get	get	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
20	nervous	nervous	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	xcomp	_	_
21	too	too	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
22	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
23	so	so	ADV	RB	_	27	advmod	_	_
24	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	27	nsubj	_	_
25	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	27	cop	_	_
26	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	27	advmod	_	_
27	reliable	reliable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	conj	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	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 | **measure** | present | detector machines | nervousness |  |  |  | like heartbeat and sweat | vn register-54.1-2-1 «NP V NP.value»: agent=Theme nervousness=Value |
| 2 | **get** | present | honest people |  |  |  |  | nervous *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **not** **is** | present | people |  |  |  |  | reliable *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.

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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:198-telling-when-someone-may-be-lying.lesson:15`.

**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/).

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