---
title: Ask whether a story could have happened that way; if it couldn't, it… — Stories that change · tree and pragmatics
description: Ask whether a story could have happened that way; if it couldn't, it didn't. Who acts: you, story. A sentence of the lesson «Stories that change» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Stories that change, sentence 41

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Ask whether a story could have happened that way; if it couldn't, it didn't.

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**Who acts:** you, story · **What happens:** ask, happen · **To what, where:** way · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Stories that change» 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 (you, story), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:449-stories-that-change.lesson:41
# text = Ask whether a story could have happened that way; if it couldn't, it didn't.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 449-stories-that-change.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): R8-pos-agree ×1
1	Ask	ask	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	whether	whether	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
5	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	aux	_	_
7	happened	happen	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	1	ccomp	_	_
8	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	9	det	_	_
9	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl:unmarked	_	_
10	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
11	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	17	advcl	_	_
14	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
16	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
17	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	1	parataxis	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=1:parataxis|HaikuPos=VERB:VBD:Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin
18	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	17	advmod	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: command
- act: request
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **happen** | could · perfect | a story | that way |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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:449-stories-that-change.lesson:41`.

**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): R8-pos-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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- ← previous: [Stories that change, 40](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/449-stories-that-change/40/)
- next →: [Stories that change, 42](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/449-stories-that-change/42/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/449-stories-that-change/)