---
title: An excuse that is not true, like «the dog ate my homework», is a lie… — Little lies at home · tree and pragmatics
description: An excuse that is not true, like «the dog ate my homework», is a lie in a costume. Who acts: excuse, dog. A sentence of the lesson «Little lies at home» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Little lies at home, sentence 16

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An excuse that is not true, like «the dog ate my homework», is a lie in a costume.

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**Who acts:** excuse, dog · **What happens:** not be, eat, be · **To what, where:** homework, lie, costume

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Little lies at home» 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 (excuse, dog), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:336-little-lies-at-home.lesson:16
# text = An excuse that is not true, like «the dog ate my homework», is a lie in a costume.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 336-little-lies-at-home.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	An	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	excuse	excuse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nsubj	_	_
3	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	6	nsubj	_	_
4	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
5	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
6	true	true	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	acl:relcl	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	like	like	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
9	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	ate	eat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	advcl	_	_
13	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	homework	homework	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
15	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
17	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	lie	lie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
20	in	in	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	costume	costume	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nmod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=19:obl
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	19	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 | **not** **is** | present | a excuse |  |  |  |  | true *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **eat** *in a quote* | past | the dog | my homework |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent homework=Patient |
| 3 | **is a** | present | a excuse | a lie |  | a costume |  |  | 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:336-little-lies-at-home.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): 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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