---
title: A witness should say only what they really saw and heard, not guesse… — When the police come · tree and pragmatics
description: A witness should say only what they really saw and heard, not guesses or what others said. Who acts: witness, questions, others. A sentence of the lesson «When the police come» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# When the police come, sentence 28

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A witness should say only what they really saw and heard, not guesses or what others said.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** witness, questions, others · **What happens:** say, see, hear · **To what, where:** guesses · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «When the police come» 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 (witness, questions, others), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:384-when-the-police-come.lesson:28
# text = A witness should say only what they really saw and heard, not guesses or what others said.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 384-when-the-police-come.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	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	witness	witness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	only	only	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	obj	_	_
7	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	really	really	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	acl:relcl	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
14	guesses	guess	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obj	_	_
15	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
16	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	14	conj	_	_
17	others	other	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	nsubj	_	_
18	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	acl:relcl	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	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 | **say** *speech: assert* | should | a witness |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=Topic |
| 2 | **see** | past | questions *= question* |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **hear** | past | questions *= question* *not said here* | guesses |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer guess=Stimulus |
| 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | others |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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:384-when-the-police-come.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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