---
title: In Atlanta, Tyrone's mom says, «We fixin' to tighten belts. — The electric meter, the food bank and «we can't… · tree and pragmatics
description: In Atlanta, Tyrone's mom says, «We fixin' to tighten belts. Who acts: mom, We. A sentence of the lesson «The electric meter, the food bank and «we can't afford it»» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/488-the-electric-meter-the-food-bank-and-we-cant-afford-it/14/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Everyday](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/) / [The electric meter, the food bank and…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/488-the-electric-meter-the-food-bank-and-we-cant-afford-it/) / 14

# The electric meter, the food bank and «we can't afford it», sentence 14

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
In Atlanta, Tyrone's mom says, «We fixin' to tighten belts.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** mom, We · **What happens:** say, fixin, tighten · **To what, where:** Atlanta, belts · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «The electric meter, the food bank and «we can't afford it»» 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 (mom, We), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:488-the-electric-meter-the-food-bank-and-we-cant-afford-it.lesson:14
# text = In Atlanta, Tyrone's mom says, «We fixin' to tighten belts.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 488-the-electric-meter-the-food-bank-and-we-cant-afford-it.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 ×2
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	Atlanta	Atlanta	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	Tyrone	Tyrone	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	nmod:poss	_	_
5	's	's	PART	POS	_	4	case	_	_
6	mom	mom	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
9	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	_
10	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	fixin	fixin	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	ccomp	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=14:advcl
12	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
13	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
14	tighten	tighten	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	advcl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=7:ccomp
15	belts	belt	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obj	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | Tyrone's mom |  |  | Atlanta |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **fixin** *in a quote* | present | We |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **tighten** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | We *not said here* | belts |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent belt=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.

<!-- div src -->

**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:488-the-electric-meter-the-food-bank-and-we-cant-afford-it.lesson:14`.

**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 ×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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [The electric meter, the food bank and…, 12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/488-the-electric-meter-the-food-bank-and-we-cant-afford-it/12/)
- next →: [The electric meter, the food bank and…, 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/488-the-electric-meter-the-food-bank-and-we-cant-afford-it/15/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/488-the-electric-meter-the-food-bank-and-we-cant-afford-it/)