---
title: Problems kept secret for a long time usually get bigger, not smaller. — Getting help is not telling tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Problems kept secret for a long time usually get bigger, not smaller. Who acts: Problems. A sentence of the lesson «Getting help is not telling tales» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Getting help is not telling tales, sentence 28

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Problems kept secret for a long time usually get bigger, not smaller.

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**Who acts:** Problems · **What happens:** keep, get · **To what, where:** Problems

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Getting help is not telling tales» 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 (Problems), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:369-getting-help-is-not-telling-tales.lesson:28
# text = Problems kept secret for a long time usually get bigger, not smaller.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 369-getting-help-is-not-telling-tales.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	Problems	problem	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
2	kept	keep	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	1	acl	_	_
3	secret	secret	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	xcomp	_	_
4	for	for	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
8	usually	usually	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	get	get	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	bigger	big	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	9	xcomp	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	smaller	small	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	10	conj	_	_
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	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 | **keep** | participle |  | Problems *not said here* |  |  | time | secret *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **get** | present | Problems |  |  |  |  | big, usually *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer |

<!-- .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:369-getting-help-is-not-telling-tales.lesson:28`.

**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: [Getting help is not telling tales, 26](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/369-getting-help-is-not-telling-tales/26/)
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- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/369-getting-help-is-not-telling-tales/)