---
title: To ask a stranger, like a shop assistant, a question, start with «Ex… — Manners: greeting every worker, handshakes, «How… · tree and pragmatics
description: To ask a stranger, like a shop assistant, a question, start with «Excuse me». Who acts: you, stranger. A sentence of the lesson «Manners: greeting every worker, handshakes, «How's it going?», introductions, goodbyes, please and thank you, excuse me, and table manners» of the everyday course of Mova'
---

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# Manners: greeting every worker, handshakes, «How's it going?», introductions, goodbyes, please and thank you, excuse me, and table manners, sentence 16

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To ask a stranger, like a shop assistant, a question, start with «Excuse me».

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**Who acts:** you, stranger · **What happens:** ask, start, excuse · **To what, where:** stranger, me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Manners: greeting every worker, handshakes, «How's it going?», introductions, goodbyes, please and thank you, excuse me, 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 (you, stranger), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:323-greetings-handshakes-goodbyes-please-and-table-manners.lesson:16
# text = To ask a stranger, like a shop assistant, a question, start with «Excuse me».
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 323-greetings-handshakes-goodbyes-please-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, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	To	to	PART	TO	_	2	mark	_	_
2	ask	ask	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	14	advcl	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	stranger	stranger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	iobj	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=2:obj
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
6	like	like	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	shop	shop	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
9	assistant	assistant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	appos	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	question	question	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	appos	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
14	start	start	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	with	with	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
16	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	17	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=15:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:::_
17	Excuse	excuse	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	xcomp	_	_
18	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	17	obj	_	_
19	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	17	punct	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: command
- act: request
- voice: narrator
- polarity: pos
- teacher: changed form=imp

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | to-infinitive | you *not said here* |  | a stranger |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent stranger=Recipient |
| 2 | **start** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **excuse** *in a quote* | infinitive | a stranger *= stranger* *not said here* | me |  |  |  |  | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=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:323-greetings-handshakes-goodbyes-please-and-table-manners.lesson:16`.

**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, 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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- next →: [Manners: greeting every worker, handsh…, 17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/323-greetings-handshakes-goodbyes-please-and-table-manners/17/)
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