---
title: Slipping back into a bad habit after a promise is common; changing h… — Snooping on phones, diaries and letters · tree and pragmatics
description: Slipping back into a bad habit after a promise is common; changing habits takes many tries. Who acts: Slipping, changing. A sentence of the lesson «Snooping on phones, diaries and letters» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Snooping on phones, diaries and letters, sentence 24

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Slipping back into a bad habit after a promise is common; changing habits takes many tries.

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**Who acts:** Slipping, changing · **What happens:** slip back, be, change, take · **To what, where:** bad habit, habits, many tries

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Snooping on phones, diaries and letters» 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 (Slipping, changing), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:357-snooping-on-phones-bags-calls-and-codes.lesson:24
# text = Slipping back into a bad habit after a promise is common; changing habits takes many tries.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 357-snooping-on-phones-bags-calls-and-codes.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	Slipping	slip	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	11	csubj	_	_
2	back	back	ADV	RB	_	1	advmod	_	_
3	into	into	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	bad	bad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	habit	habit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
7	after	after	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	promise	promise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
11	common	common	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
12	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	_
13	changing	change	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	15	csubj	_	_
14	habits	habit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	_
15	takes	take	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	parataxis	_	_
16	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	tries	try	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obj	_	_
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: neg
- teacher: changed act=assert

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **slip back** | gerund |  |  |  | a bad habit | after a promise |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1-1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 2 | **is** | present | Slipping |  |  |  |  | common *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **change** | gerund |  | habits |  |  |  |  | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent habit=Patient |
| 4 | **take** | present | changing | many tries |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent try=Theme |

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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:357-snooping-on-phones-bags-calls-and-codes.lesson:24`.

**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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- ← previous: [Snooping on phones, diaries and letters, 23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/357-snooping-on-phones-bags-calls-and-codes/23/)
- next →: [Snooping on phones, diaries and letters, 25](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/357-snooping-on-phones-bags-calls-and-codes/25/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/357-snooping-on-phones-bags-calls-and-codes/)