---
title: Saying something technically true to hide the truth is still a kind… — Covering for a friend · tree and pragmatics
description: Saying something technically true to hide the truth is still a kind of trick. Who acts: Saying. A sentence of the lesson «Covering for a friend» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Covering for a friend, sentence 33

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Saying something technically true to hide the truth is still a kind of trick.

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**Who acts:** Saying · **What happens:** say, hide, be · **To what, where:** something, truth, kind · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Covering for a friend» 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 (Saying), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:436-covering-for-a-friend.lesson:33
# text = Saying something technically true to hide the truth is still a kind of trick.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 436-covering-for-a-friend.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	Saying	say	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	12	csubj	_	_
2	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	1	obj	_	_
3	technically	technically	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	true	true	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	hide	hide	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	advcl	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	truth	truth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
10	still	still	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	kind	kind	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	trick	trick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	_
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: neg
- teacher: changed polarity=neg

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | gerund |  | something |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent something=Topic |
| 2 | **hide** | to-infinitive |  | the truth |  |  |  |  | vn concealment-16-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent truth=Patient |
| 3 | **is a** | present | Saying | a kind |  |  | still | of trick | 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:436-covering-for-a-friend.lesson:33`.

**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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