---
title: If you need to break a plan, telling the person in advance is kinder… — Promises to family · tree and pragmatics
description: If you need to break a plan, telling the person in advance is kinder than not turning up. Who acts: you, telling. A sentence of the lesson «Promises to family» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Promises to family, sentence 18

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If you need to break a plan, telling the person in advance is kinder than not turning up.

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**Who acts:** you, telling · **What happens:** need, break, tell, be, not turn up · **To what, where:** plan, person, advance · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Promises to family» 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 (you, telling), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:358-promises-to-little-brothers-gran-dad-and-the-cat.lesson:18
# text = If you need to break a plan, telling the person in advance is kinder than not turning up.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 358-promises-to-little-brothers-gran-dad-and-the-cat.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	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	need	need	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	advcl	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	break	break	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	plan	plan	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	telling	tell	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	15	csubj	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	advance	advance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
14	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
15	kinder	kind	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
16	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
17	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	18	advmod	_	_
18	turning	turn	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	15	advcl	_	_
19	up	up	ADP	RP	_	18	compound:prt	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: evaluate
- voice: narrator
- polarity: pos
- teacher: changed act=evaluate, polarity=pos

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **need** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **break** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | you *not said here* | a plan |  |  |  |  | vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer plan=Patient |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* | gerund |  |  | the person | advance |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent person=Recipient |
| 4 | **is** | present | telling |  |  |  |  | kind *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **not** **turn up** | gerund | telling *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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:358-promises-to-little-brothers-gran-dad-and-the-cat.lesson:18`.

**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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