---
title: A handy trick to practise it: say "k", then slide back into a soft,… — Funny French sounds: nasal vowels, the French r… · tree and pragmatics
description: A handy trick to practise it: say "k", then slide back into a soft, breathy scrape. A sentence of the lesson «Funny French sounds: nasal vowels, the French r and u» of the french course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Funny French sounds: nasal vowels, the French r and u, sentence 3

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A handy trick to practise it: say "k", then slide back into a soft, breathy scrape.

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**What happens:** practise, say, slide back · **To what, where:** trick, k, soft breathy scrape · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Funny French sounds: nasal vowels, the French r and u» of the french 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: what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:french:002-funny-french-sounds-nasal-vowels-the-french-r-and-u.lesson:3
# text = A handy trick to practise it: say "k", then slide back into a soft, breathy scrape.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = french
# lesson = 002-funny-french-sounds-nasal-vowels-the-french-r-and-u.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	3	det	_	_
2	handy	handy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	trick	trick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	practise	practise	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	acl	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	_
7	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	8	punct	_	_
8	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=3:acl:relcl
9	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	_
10	k	k	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	14	advmod	_	_
14	slide	slide	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	conj	_	_
15	back	back	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
16	into	into	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
18	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
20	breathy	breathy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	scrape	scrape	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	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 | **practise** | to-infinitive |  | trick |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | infinitive |  | k |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent k=Topic |
| 3 | **slide back** | infinitive |  |  |  | a soft breathy scrape | then |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme into scrape=Destination |

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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:french:002-funny-french-sounds-nasal-vowels-the-french-r-and-u.lesson:3`.

**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/).

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