---
title: Pretending to be ill makes it harder for people to believe you on a… — «The dog ate it»: excuses for homework · tree and pragmatics
description: Pretending to be ill makes it harder for people to believe you on a day you really are ill. Who acts: Pretending, people, you. A sentence of the lesson ««The dog ate it»: excuses for homework» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause
---

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# «The dog ate it»: excuses for homework, sentence 27

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Pretending to be ill makes it harder for people to believe you on a day you really are ill.

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**Who acts:** Pretending, people, you · **What happens:** pretend, be, make, believe · **To what, where:** you, day

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This is a sentence of the lesson ««The dog ate it»: excuses for homework» 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 (Pretending, people, you), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework.lesson:27
# text = Pretending to be ill makes it harder for people to believe you on a day you really are ill.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework.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	Pretending	pretend	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	5	csubj	_	_
2	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
3	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	cop	_	_
4	ill	ill	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	1	xcomp	_	_
5	makes	make	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	harder	hard	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	5	xcomp	_	_
8	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
9	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	believe	believe	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	advcl	_	_
12	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	_
13	on	on	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
16	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
17	really	really	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
18	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
19	ill	ill	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	acl:relcl	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pretend** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | ill *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **make** | present | Pretending |  |  |  |  | hard *property* | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset |
| 4 | **believe** | to-infinitive | people | you |  |  | day |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer you=Stimulus |
| 5 | **is** | present | you | a day *not said here* |  |  |  | ill *property* | tree rules |

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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:426-the-dog-ate-it-excuses-for-homework.lesson:27`.

**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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