---
title: A stammer is a difference in speech that people cannot just switch o… — Teasing and laughing at others · tree and pragmatics
description: A stammer is a difference in speech that people cannot just switch off, and mocking it makes it harder. Who acts: stammer, people, mocking. A sentence of the lesson «Teasing and laughing at others» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every c
---

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# Teasing and laughing at others, sentence 15

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A stammer is a difference in speech that people cannot just switch off, and mocking it makes it harder.

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**Who acts:** stammer, people, mocking · **What happens:** be, not switch off, mock, make · **To what, where:** difference, speech, stammer

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Teasing and laughing at others» 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 (stammer, people, mocking), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:346-teasing-and-laughing-at-others.lesson:15
# text = A stammer is a difference in speech that people cannot just switch off, and mocking it makes it harder.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 346-teasing-and-laughing-at-others.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
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	stammer	stammer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	difference	difference	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	speech	speech	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
8	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	13	obj	_	_
9	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	_
10	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
11	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
12	just	just	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	switch	switch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	acl:relcl	_	_
14	off	off	ADP	RP	_	13	compound:prt	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=17:punct
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
17	mocking	mock	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	19	csubj	_	_
18	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obj	_	_
19	makes	make	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
20	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	obj	_	_
21	harder	hard	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	19	xcomp	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | a stammer | a difference |  | speech |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **switch off** | can | people | speech |  |  |  |  | vn convert-26.6.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent that=Patient |
| 3 | **mock** | gerund |  | stammer |  |  |  |  | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 4 | **make** | present | mocking | stammer |  |  |  | hard *property* | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset it=Product |

<!-- .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:346-teasing-and-laughing-at-others.lesson:15`.

**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. **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: [Teasing and laughing at others, 14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/346-teasing-and-laughing-at-others/14/)
- next →: [Teasing and laughing at others, 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/346-teasing-and-laughing-at-others/16/)
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