---
title: A quick «How's it going?» in Canada or the USA is a greeting, not a… — Greetings, goodbyes, please and thank you, and t… · tree and pragmatics
description: A quick «How's it going?» in Canada or the USA is a greeting, not a real question. Who acts: «, quick «. A sentence of the lesson «Greetings, goodbyes, please and thank you, and table manners» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause
---

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# Greetings, goodbyes, please and thank you, and table manners, sentence 4

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A quick «How's it going?» in Canada or the USA is a greeting, not a real question.

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**Who acts:** «, quick « · **What happens:** go, be · **To what, where:** greeting

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Greetings, goodbyes, please and thank you, and table manners» 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 («, quick «), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:296-greetings-goodbyes-and-table-manners.lesson:4
# text = A quick «How's it going?» in Canada or the USA is a greeting, not a real question.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 296-greetings-goodbyes-and-table-manners.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): R6-punct-agree ×1
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	quick	quick	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	«	«	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj	_	_
4	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	_
5	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	going	go	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	acl:relcl	_	_
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
9	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=3:punct
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	Canada	Canada	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
12	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	USA	USA	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	conj	_	_
15	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	greeting	greeting	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
19	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	22	advmod	_	_
20	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
21	real	real	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	question	question	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nmod	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	17	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 | **go** *in a quote* | present · progressive | « |  |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** | present | a quick « in Canada or the USA | a greeting |  |  |  | a real question *nmod* | 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:296-greetings-goodbyes-and-table-manners.lesson:4`.

**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): R6-punct-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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- ← previous: [Greetings, goodbyes, please and thank…, 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/296-greetings-goodbyes-and-table-manners/3/)
- next →: [Greetings, goodbyes, please and thank…, 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/296-greetings-goodbyes-and-table-manners/5/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/296-greetings-goodbyes-and-table-manners/)