---
title: A threat to tell a lie about you loses its power when you tell a gro… — Big kids, little kids and the truth at home · tree and pragmatics
description: A threat to tell a lie about you loses its power when you tell a grown-up first. Who acts: threat, you. A sentence of the lesson «Big kids, little kids and the truth at home» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Big kids, little kids and the truth at home, sentence 38

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A threat to tell a lie about you loses its power when you tell a grown-up first.

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**Who acts:** threat, you · **What happens:** tell, lose · **To what, where:** lie, power, grown · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Big kids, little kids and the truth at home» 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 (threat, you), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:433-big-kids-little-kids-and-the-truth-at-home.lesson:38
# text = A threat to tell a lie about you loses its power when you tell a grown-up first.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 433-big-kids-little-kids-and-the-truth-at-home.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): R5-strong ×1
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	threat	threat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	acl	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	lie	lie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	about	about	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nmod	_	_
9	loses	lose	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	power	power	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	14	mark	_	_
13	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	tell	tell	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	advcl	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=16:det
16	grown	grow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	_
17	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	18	punct	_	_
18	up	up	ADP	RP	_	16	compound	_	_
19	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	14	advmod	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	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 | **tell** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | a threat *not said here* | a lie |  |  |  | about you | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent lie=Recipient about you=Topic |
| 2 | **lose** | present | a threat | lie's power |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent power=Eventuality |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* | present | you | grown |  |  |  | first *property* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent grow=Recipient |

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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:433-big-kids-little-kids-and-the-truth-at-home.lesson:38`.

**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): R5-strong ×1. **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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