---
title: They sit for hours and say almost nothing, and Otto thinks Dad doesn… — Cold parents: always on the phone · tree and pragmatics
description: They sit for hours and say almost nothing, and Otto thinks Dad doesn't care. Who acts: parents, Otto, Dad. A sentence of the lesson «Cold parents: always on the phone» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Cold parents: always on the phone, sentence 27

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They sit for hours and say almost nothing, and Otto thinks Dad doesn't care.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** parents, Otto, Dad · **What happens:** sit, say, think, not care · **To what, where:** nothing · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Cold parents: always on the phone» 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 (parents, Otto, Dad), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:495-cold-parents-always-on-the-phone.lesson:27
# text = They sit for hours and say almost nothing, and Otto thinks Dad doesn't care.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 495-cold-parents-always-on-the-phone.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): no change
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sit	sit	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	for	for	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	hours	hour	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	say	say	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
7	almost	almost	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	6	obj	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	Otto	Otto	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	thinks	think	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
13	Dad	Dad	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
14	does	do	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
15	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	16	advmod	_	_
16	care	care	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	ccomp	_	_
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | present | parents *= parent* |  |  |  | hour |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | parents *= parent* *not said here* | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent nothing=Topic |
| 3 | **think** *speech: other* | present | Otto |  |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 4 | **not** **care** | present · do-support | Dad |  |  |  |  |  | vn care-88.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |

<!-- .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:495-cold-parents-always-on-the-phone.lesson:27`.

**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): no change. **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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