---
title: A crowd is like petrol: neither boy wanted to back down with thirty… — Bystanders: the crowd, the phone and the ones wh… · tree and pragmatics
description: A crowd is like petrol: neither boy wanted to back down with thirty faces watching. Who acts: crowd, boy, thirty faces. A sentence of the lesson «Bystanders: the crowd, the phone and the ones who help» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of eve
---

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# Bystanders: the crowd, the phone and the ones who help, sentence 2

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A crowd is like petrol: neither boy wanted to back down with thirty faces watching.

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**Who acts:** crowd, boy, thirty faces · **What happens:** be, want, back down, watch

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Bystanders: the crowd, the phone and the ones who help» 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 (crowd, boy, thirty faces), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:393-bystanders.lesson:2
# text = A crowd is like petrol: neither boy wanted to back down with thirty faces watching.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 393-bystanders.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	crowd	crowd	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	like	like	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	petrol	petrol	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	9	punct	_	_
7	neither	neither	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	8	det	_	_
8	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
9	wanted	want	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	parataxis	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	back	back	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	_
12	down	down	ADP	RP	_	11	compound:prt	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	thirty	thirty	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	15	nummod	_	_
15	faces	face	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obl	_	_
16	watching	watch	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	15	acl	_	_
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | a crowd |  |  |  |  | like petrol | tree rules |
| 2 | **want** | past | neither boy |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 3 | **back down** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | neither boy *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with thirty faces | vn withdraw-82-2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **watch** | gerund | thirty faces *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn search-35.2 «NP V PP.location»: 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:393-bystanders.lesson:2`.

**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: [Bystanders: the crowd, the phone and t…, 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/393-bystanders/1/)
- next →: [Bystanders: the crowd, the phone and t…, 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/393-bystanders/3/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/393-bystanders/)