---
title: There is no rule against it; it's just habit, and habits can be chan… — Maddie the tomboy · tree and pragmatics
description: There is no rule against it; it's just habit, and habits can be changed by asking. Who acts: rule. A sentence of the lesson «Maddie the tomboy» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Maddie the tomboy, sentence 15

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
There is no rule against it; it's just habit, and habits can be changed by asking.

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**Who acts:** rule · **What happens:** be, change, ask · **To what, where:** habit, habits

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Maddie the tomboy» 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 (rule), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:378-maddie-the-tomboy.lesson:15
# text = There is no rule against it; it's just habit, and habits can be changed by asking.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 378-maddie-the-tomboy.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	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	is	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	4	det	_	_
4	rule	rule	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
5	against	against	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nmod	_	_
7	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
10	just	just	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	habit	habit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	parataxis	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
14	habits	habit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	nsubj:pass	_	_
15	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
16	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	aux:pass	_	_
17	changed	change	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	conj	_	_
18	by	by	SCONJ	IN	_	19	mark	_	_
19	asking	ask	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	17	advcl	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | present | no rule against rec. |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** | present | rule | habit |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **change** | can · passive |  | habits |  |  |  |  | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient |
| 4 | **ask** *speech: ask* | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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:378-maddie-the-tomboy.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): 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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