---
title: A small kind act, like carrying shopping or drawing a picture, can s… — The ball over the fence and the grumpy old man n… · tree and pragmatics
description: A small kind act, like carrying shopping or drawing a picture, can soften a grumpy person. Who acts: small kind act. A sentence of the lesson «The ball over the fence and the grumpy old man next door» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of ever
---

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# The ball over the fence and the grumpy old man next door, sentence 32

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A small kind act, like carrying shopping or drawing a picture, can soften a grumpy person.

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**Who acts:** small kind act · **What happens:** carry, draw, soften · **To what, where:** shopping, picture, grumpy person

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This is a sentence of the lesson «The ball over the fence and the grumpy old man next door» 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 (small kind act), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:473-the-ball-over-the-fence-and-the-grumpy-old-man-next-door.lesson:32
# text = A small kind act, like carrying shopping or drawing a picture, can soften a grumpy person.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 473-the-ball-over-the-fence-and-the-grumpy-old-man-next-door.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	4	det	_	_
2	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
3	kind	kind	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	act	act	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	like	like	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
7	carrying	carry	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	acl	_	_
8	shopping	shop	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
9	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	drawing	draw	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	conj	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=8:conj
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	picture	picture	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
14	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	soften	soften	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
17	grumpy	grumpy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed act=assert

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **carry** | gerund | a small kind act *not said here* | shopping |  |  |  |  | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent shop=Theme |
| 2 | **draw** | gerund | a small kind act *not said here* | a picture |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent picture=Theme |
| 3 | **soften** | can | a small kind act | a grumpy person |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent person=Patient |

<!-- .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:473-the-ball-over-the-fence-and-the-grumpy-old-man-next-door.lesson:32`.

**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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