--- title: «Tightening belts» means spending less for a while; families do it w… — The electric meter, the food bank and «we can't… · tree and pragmatics description: «Tightening belts» means spending less for a while; families do it when money is tight, and it doesn't mean danger. Who acts: Tightening, families, money, bank. 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 --- [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/35/) [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/) / 35 # The electric meter, the food bank and «we can't afford it», sentence 35 «Tightening belts» means spending less for a while; families do it when money is tight, and it doesn't mean danger. **Who acts:** Tightening, families, money, bank · **What happens:** tighten, mean, spend, do, be, not mean · **To what, where:** belts, less, bank, danger · **Speech:** someone speaks here 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 (Tightening, families, money, bank), 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:35 # text = «Tightening belts» means spending less for a while; families do it when money is tight, and it doesn't mean danger. # 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 ×1, R7-rel-agree ×2 1 « « PUNCT `` _ 2 punct _ _ 2 Tightening tighten VERB VBG Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part 5 csubj _ Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=5:nsubj 3 belts belt NOUN NNS Number=Plur 2 obj _ _ 4 » » PUNCT '' _ 2 punct _ _ 5 means mean VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 0 root _ _ 6 spending spend VERB VBG VerbForm=Ger 5 xcomp _ Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=5:ccomp 7 less less ADJ JJR Degree=Cmp 6 obj _ _ 8 for for ADP IN _ 10 case _ _ 9 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 10 det _ _ 10 while while NOUN NN Number=Sing 6 obl _ Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=7:obl 11 ; ; PUNCT , _ 5 punct _ _ 12 families family NOUN NNS Number=Plur 13 nsubj _ _ 13 do do VERB VBP Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 5 parataxis _ _ 14 it it PRON PRP Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs 13 obj _ _ 15 when when ADV WRB PronType=Int 18 advmod _ _ 16 money money NOUN NN Number=Sing 18 nsubj _ _ 17 is be AUX VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 18 cop _ _ 18 tight tight ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 13 advcl _ _ 19 , , PUNCT , _ 24 punct _ _ 20 and and CCONJ CC _ 24 cc _ _ 21 it it PRON PRP Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs 24 nsubj _ _ 22 does do AUX VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 24 aux _ _ 23 n't not PART RB Polarity=Neg 24 advmod _ _ 24 mean mean VERB VB VerbForm=Inf 13 conj _ _ 25 danger danger NOUN NN Number=Sing 24 obj _ _ 26 . . PUNCT . _ 5 punct _ _ ``` ## Pragmatics {#pragmatics} No stored speech act for this sentence. | # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | **tighten** *in a quote* | gerund | | belts | | | | | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent belt=Patient | | 2 | **mean** | present | Tightening | | | | | | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | | 3 | **spend** *not said to happen* | gerund | Tightening *not said here* | less | | | while | | vn consume-66-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent less=Asset | | 4 | **do** | present | families | bank | | | | | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality | | 5 | **is** | present | money | | | | | tight *property* | tree rules | | 6 | **not** **mean** | present · do-support | bank | danger | | | | | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent danger=Topic | 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. **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:35`. **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, R7-rel-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/). - ← previous: [The electric meter, the food bank and…, 34](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/488-the-electric-meter-the-food-bank-and-we-cant-afford-it/34/) - next →: [The electric meter, the food bank and…, 36](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/488-the-electric-meter-the-food-bank-and-we-cant-afford-it/36/) - ↑ 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/)