---
title: Whispering unkind things behind someone's back is as bad as saying t… — Teasing and laughing at others · tree and pragmatics
description: Whispering unkind things behind someone's back is as bad as saying them out loud. Who acts: Whispering. 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 clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/346-teasing-and-laughing-at-others/19/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Everyday](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/) / [Teasing and laughing at others](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/346-teasing-and-laughing-at-others/) / 19

# Teasing and laughing at others, sentence 19

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Whispering unkind things behind someone's back is as bad as saying them out loud.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Whispering · **What happens:** whisper, be, say out · **To what, where:** unkind things, back, things

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (Whispering), 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:19
# text = Whispering unkind things behind someone's back is as bad as saying them out loud.
# 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): no change
1	Whispering	whisper	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	10	csubj	_	_
2	unkind	unkind	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	obj	_	_
4	behind	behind	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	someone	someone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	7	nmod:poss	_	_
6	's	's	PART	POS	_	5	case	_	_
7	back	back	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
9	as	as	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	bad	bad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
11	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
12	saying	say	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	10	advcl	_	_
13	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	_
14	out	out	ADP	RP	_	12	compound:prt	_	_
15	loud	loud	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	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 | **whisper** *speech: assert* | gerund |  | unkind things |  | someone's back |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thing=Topic |
| 2 | **is** | present | Whispering |  |  |  |  | bad *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **say out** *speech: assert* | gerund | Whispering *not said here* | things *= thing* |  |  |  | loud *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent they=Topic |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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: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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Teasing and laughing at others, 18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/346-teasing-and-laughing-at-others/18/)
- next →: [Teasing and laughing at others, 21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/346-teasing-and-laughing-at-others/21/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/346-teasing-and-laughing-at-others/)