---
title: To «grass» or «grass up» (UK) means to tell on someone. — When not to keep a friend's secret · tree and pragmatics
description: To «grass» or «grass up» (UK) means to tell on someone. Who acts: grass. A sentence of the lesson «When not to keep a friend's secret» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# When not to keep a friend's secret, sentence 44

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
To «grass» or «grass up» (UK) means to tell on someone.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** grass · **What happens:** grass up, mean, tell · **To what, where:** someone · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «When not to keep a friend's secret» 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 (grass), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:437-when-not-to-keep-a-friends-secret.lesson:44
# text = To «grass» or «grass up» (UK) means to tell on someone.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 437-when-not-to-keep-a-friends-secret.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): R6-punct-agree ×2
1	To	to	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	_
3	grass	grass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
4	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=7:punct
5	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
6	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	_
7	grass	grass	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
8	up	up	ADP	RP	_	7	compound:prt	_	_
9	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=7:punct
10	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	11	punct	_	_
11	UK	UK	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	appos	_	_
12	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	11	punct	_	_
13	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
16	on	on	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	someone	someone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	15	obl	_	_
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **grass up** *in a quote* | infinitive | grass *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn butter-9.9 «NP V NP.destination»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **mean** | present | grass |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | grass *not said here* |  |  | someone |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: 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:437-when-not-to-keep-a-friends-secret.lesson:44`.

**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): R6-punct-agree ×2. **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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