---
title: If you cannot keep a promise, tell the person as early as you can an… — Promises · tree and pragmatics
description: If you cannot keep a promise, tell the person as early as you can and say sorry. Who acts: you. A sentence of the lesson «Promises» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Promises, sentence 15

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If you cannot keep a promise, tell the person as early as you can and say sorry.

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** not keep, tell, say · **To what, where:** promise, person · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:199-promises.lesson:15
# text = If you cannot keep a promise, tell the person as early as you can and say sorry.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 199-promises.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	_	5	mark	_	_
2	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	advcl	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	promise	promise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
9	tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	as	as	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	early	early	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	9	advmod	_	_
14	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
15	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	advcl	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
18	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	conj	_	_
19	sorry	sorry	INTJ	UH	_	18	ccomp	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=18:discourse
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: command
- act: request
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed form=imp

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **keep** *a condition, not said to happen* | can | you | a promise |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent promise=Theme |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | the person |  |  | early *property* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent person=Recipient |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | infinitive | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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:199-promises.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): 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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