---
title: A silent letter is a letter you write but don't say. — Silent letters and the mystery of -ough · tree and pragmatics
description: A silent letter is a letter you write but don't say. Who acts: silent letter, you. A sentence of the lesson «Silent letters and the mystery of -ough» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Silent letters and the mystery of -ough, sentence 5

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A silent letter is a letter you write but don't say.

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**Who acts:** silent letter, you · **What happens:** be, write, not say · **To what, where:** letter · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Silent letters and the mystery of -ough» of the language 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 (silent letter, you), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:013-silent-letters-and-the-mystery-of-ough.lesson:5
# text = A silent letter is a letter you write but don't say.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 013-silent-letters-and-the-mystery-of-ough.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	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	silent	silent	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	letter	letter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
4	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	letter	letter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	write	write	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	acl:relcl	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
10	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
11	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	12	advmod	_	_
12	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	conj	_	_
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	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 | **is a** | present | a silent letter | a letter |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **write** | present | you | a letter *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent letter=Theme |
| 3 | **not** **say** *speech: assert* | present · do-support | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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:language:013-silent-letters-and-the-mystery-of-ough.lesson:5`.

**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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