---
title: If a knife falls, step back and let it drop; never try to catch it. — Safe in the kitchen · tree and pragmatics
description: If a knife falls, step back and let it drop; never try to catch it. Who acts: knife, you, board. A sentence of the lesson «Safe in the kitchen» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Safe in the kitchen, sentence 13

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
If a knife falls, step back and let it drop; never try to catch it.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** knife, you, board · **What happens:** fall, step back, let, drop, not try, catch · **To what, where:** board

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Safe in the kitchen» 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 (knife, you, board), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:031-kitchen-safety.lesson:13
# text = If a knife falls, step back and let it drop; never try to catch it.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 031-kitchen-safety.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	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	knife	knife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	falls	fall	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	advcl	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
6	step	step	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	back	back	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	let	let	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	_
11	drop	drop	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	_
12	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
14	try	try	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=6:conj
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	catch	catch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	xcomp	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	_
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	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 | **fall** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | a knife |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **step back** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **let** | infinitive | you *not said here* | board |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **drop** | infinitive | board *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **not** **try** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 6 | **catch** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive |  | board |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=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:031-kitchen-safety.lesson:13`.

**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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