---
title: Mum thought, then said: «It's a white lie, to be kind. — Grown-ups' little lies: the ice-cream van · tree and pragmatics
description: Mum thought, then said: «It's a white lie, to be kind. Who acts: Mum, neighbour. A sentence of the lesson «Grown-ups' little lies: the ice-cream van» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grown-ups' little lies: the ice-cream van, sentence 26

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Mum thought, then said: «It's a white lie, to be kind.

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**Who acts:** Mum, neighbour · **What happens:** think, say, be · **To what, where:** white lie · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Grown-ups' little lies: the ice-cream van» 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 (Mum, neighbour), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:443-grown-ups-little-lies-the-ice-cream-van.lesson:26
# text = Mum thought, then said: «It's a white lie, to be kind.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 443-grown-ups-little-lies-the-ice-cream-van.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): R7-rel-agree ×1
1	Mum	mum	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
4	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	ccomp	_	_
6	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	12	punct	_	_
7	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	_
8	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
9	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	lie	lie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	ccomp	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
15	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	cop	_	_
16	kind	kind	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	advcl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=12:conj
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	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 | **think** *speech: other* | past | Mum |  |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  | then |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | neighbour | a white lie |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **is** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | neighbour *not said here* |  |  |  |  | kind *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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:443-grown-ups-little-lies-the-ice-cream-van.lesson:26`.

**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): R7-rel-agree ×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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- next →: [Grown-ups' little lies: the ice-cream…, 27](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/443-grown-ups-little-lies-the-ice-cream-van/27/)
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