---
title: It worked once, then twice, and he began to think it always would. — Excuses and the lies that grow · tree and pragmatics
description: It worked once, then twice, and he began to think it always would. Who acts: excuse, he. A sentence of the lesson «Excuses and the lies that grow» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Excuses and the lies that grow, sentence 2

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It worked once, then twice, and he began to think it always would.

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**Who acts:** excuse, he · **What happens:** work, begin, think

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Excuses and the lies that grow» 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, he), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:337-excuses-and-the-lies-that-grow.lesson:2
# text = It worked once, then twice, and he began to think it always would.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 337-excuses-and-the-lies-that-grow.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): R5-strong ×1
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	worked	work	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	2	advmod	_	_
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	6	advmod	_	_
6	twice	twice	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	2	advmod	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	think	think	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	xcomp	_	_
13	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=12:obj
14	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	15	advmod	_	_
15	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	ccomp	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	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 | **work** | past | excuse |  |  |  |  | once, twice *property* | vn employment-95.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **begin** | past | he |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **think** *speech: other* | to-infinitive | he *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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:337-excuses-and-the-lies-that-grow.lesson:2`.

**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): R5-strong ×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: [Excuses and the lies that grow, 0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/337-excuses-and-the-lies-that-grow/0/)
- next →: [Excuses and the lies that grow, 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/337-excuses-and-the-lies-that-grow/3/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/337-excuses-and-the-lies-that-grow/)