---
title: An excuse that works twice is still a lie, and the third time it is… — When someone else takes your punishment · tree and pragmatics
description: An excuse that works twice is still a lie, and the third time it is often seen through. Who acts: excuse. A sentence of the lesson «When someone else takes your punishment» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# When someone else takes your punishment, sentence 19

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
An excuse that works twice is still a lie, and the third time it is often seen through.

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**Who acts:** excuse · **What happens:** work, be, see through · **To what, where:** lie

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This is a sentence of the lesson «When someone else takes your punishment» 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), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:345-when-someone-else-takes-your-punishment.lesson:19
# text = An excuse that works twice is still a lie, and the third time it is often seen through.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 345-when-someone-else-takes-your-punishment.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	An	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	excuse	excuse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
3	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	4	nsubj	_	_
4	works	work	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	acl:relcl	_	_
5	twice	twice	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	4	advmod	_	_
6	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
7	still	still	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	lie	lie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	third	third	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	14	amod	_	_
14	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl:unmarked	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj:pass	_	_
16	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	18	aux:pass	_	_
17	often	often	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	seen	see	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	conj	_	_
19	through	through	ADP	IN	_	18	obl	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **work** | present | a excuse |  |  |  |  | twice *property* | vn employment-95.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** | present | a excuse | a lie |  |  | still |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **see through** | present · passive |  | lie |  |  | time | often *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Stimulus |

<!-- .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:345-when-someone-else-takes-your-punishment.lesson:19`.

**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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