---
title: A hangnail is clipped with clean clippers, because pulling it tears… — Hair, nails and ears · tree and pragmatics
description: A hangnail is clipped with clean clippers, because pulling it tears the skin and can cause infection. Who acts: pulling. A sentence of the lesson «Hair, nails and ears» 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/77-hair-nails-and-ears/11/)

<!-- 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/) / [Hair, nails and ears](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/77-hair-nails-and-ears/) / 11

# Hair, nails and ears, sentence 11

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A hangnail is clipped with clean clippers, because pulling it tears the skin and can cause infection.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** pulling · **What happens:** clip, pull, tear, cause · **To what, where:** hangnail, skin, infection

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Hair, nails and ears» 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 (pulling), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:077-hair-nails-and-ears.lesson:11
# text = A hangnail is clipped with clean clippers, because pulling it tears the skin and can cause infection.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 077-hair-nails-and-ears.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): R7-rel-agree ×1
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	hangnail	hangnail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux:pass	_	_
4	clipped	clip	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
5	with	with	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	clean	clean	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	clippers	clipper	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
10	pulling	pull	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	12	csubj	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=12:nsubj
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	_
12	tears	tear	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	skin	skin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
16	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
17	cause	cause	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	conj	_	_
18	infection	infection	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **clip** | present · passive |  | a hangnail |  |  |  | with clean clippers | vn cut-21.1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient with clipper=Instrument |
| 2 | **pull** | gerund |  | hangnail |  |  |  |  | vn push-12-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 3 | **tear** | present | pulling | the skin |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Initial\_Location skin=Theme |
| 4 | **cause** | can | pulling *not said here* | infection |  |  |  |  | vn engender-27.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Precondition infection=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:077-hair-nails-and-ears.lesson:11`.

**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): R7-rel-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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Hair, nails and ears, 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/77-hair-nails-and-ears/10/)
- next →: [Hair, nails and ears, 12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/77-hair-nails-and-ears/12/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/77-hair-nails-and-ears/)