---
title: A mess, a spill or a sick pet is easiest to fix when it is fresh — s… — Accidents told too late · tree and pragmatics
description: A mess, a spill or a sick pet is easiest to fix when it is fresh — so tell at once. Who acts: mess. A sentence of the lesson «Accidents told too late» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Accidents told too late, sentence 16

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A mess, a spill or a sick pet is easiest to fix when it is fresh — so tell at once.

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**Who acts:** mess · **What happens:** be, fix, tell · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Accidents told too late» 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 (mess), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:343-accidents-told-too-late.lesson:16
# text = A mess, a spill or a sick pet is easiest to fix when it is fresh — so tell at once.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 343-accidents-told-too-late.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): no change
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	mess	mess	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	spill	spill	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
6	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	sick	sick	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	pet	pet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	_
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
11	easiest	easy	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	0	root	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	fix	fix	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	advcl	_	_
14	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	17	advmod	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
16	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
17	fresh	fresh	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	advcl	_	_
18	—	-	PUNCT	:	_	20	punct	_	_
19	so	so	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	parataxis	_	_
21	at	at	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	once	once	ADV	RB	_	20	obl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	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 | **is** | present | a mess |  |  |  |  | easy *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **fix** | to-infinitive | a mess *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **is** | present | mess |  |  |  |  | fresh *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **tell** *speech: assert* | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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:343-accidents-told-too-late.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): no change. **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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