---
title: People who cry wolf too often are not believed when they really need… — Covering up, false alarms and playing fair · tree and pragmatics
description: People who cry wolf too often are not believed when they really need help. Who acts: People. A sentence of the lesson «Covering up, false alarms and playing fair» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Covering up, false alarms and playing fair, sentence 21

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People who cry wolf too often are not believed when they really need help.

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**Who acts:** People · **What happens:** cry, not believe, need · **To what, where:** wolf, People, help

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Covering up, false alarms and playing fair» 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 (People), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:277-covering-up-false-alarms-and-fair-play.lesson:21
# text = People who cry wolf too often are not believed when they really need help.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 277-covering-up-false-alarms-and-fair-play.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	People	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj:pass	_	_
2	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	3	nsubj	_	_
3	cry	cry	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	acl:relcl	_	_
4	wolf	wolf	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
5	too	too	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	often	often	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
7	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux:pass	_	_
8	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	9	advmod	_	_
9	believed	believe	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
10	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	13	advmod	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	really	really	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	need	need	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	advcl	_	_
14	help	help	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	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 | **cry** *speech: express* | present | People | wolf |  |  |  | often *property* | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wolf=Topic |
| 2 | **not** **believe** | present · passive |  | People |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: subject=Stimulus |
| 3 | **need** | present | People | help |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot help=Theme |

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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:277-covering-up-false-alarms-and-fair-play.lesson:21`.

**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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- ← previous: [Covering up, false alarms and playing…, 20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/277-covering-up-false-alarms-and-fair-play/20/)
- next →: [Honest schoolwork, kind jokes and pran…, 0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/278-honest-work-kind-jokes-and-harmless-play/0/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/277-covering-up-false-alarms-and-fair-play/)