---
title: Ordinary words drift too: "nice" once meant foolish, and today's sla… — Slang and how it changes with every generation · tree and pragmatics
description: Ordinary words drift too: "nice" once meant foolish, and today's slang might be tomorrow's plain word; slang also differs by place, from London's "peng" to Canada's "toque". Who acts: Ordinary words, slang, today. A sentence of the lesson «Slang and how it changes with every generation» of the langu
---

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# Slang and how it changes with every generation, sentence 4

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Ordinary words drift too: "nice" once meant foolish, and today's slang might be tomorrow's plain word; slang also differs by place, from London's "peng" to Canada's "toque".

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**Who acts:** Ordinary words, slang, today · **What happens:** drift, mean, be, differ, slang · **To what, where:** plain word

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Slang and how it changes with every generation» 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 (Ordinary words, slang, today), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:017-slang-and-how-it-changes-with-every-generation.lesson:4
# text = Ordinary words drift too: "nice" once meant foolish, and today's slang might be tomorrow's plain word; slang also differs by place, from London's "peng" to Canada's "toque".
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 017-slang-and-how-it-changes-with-every-generation.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): R6-punct-agree ×1
1	Ordinary	ordinary	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	drift	drift	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	too	too	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	7	punct	_	_
6	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	_
7	nice	nice	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	appos	_	_
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
9	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	10	advmod	_	_
10	meant	mean	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
11	foolish	foolish	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	xcomp	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
14	today	today	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod:poss	_	_
15	's	's	PART	POS	_	14	case	_	_
16	slang	slang	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	nsubj	_	_
17	might	might	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	22	aux	_	_
18	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	22	cop	_	_
19	tomorrow	tomorrow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	nmod:poss	_	_
20	's	's	PART	POS	_	19	case	_	_
21	plain	plain	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	conj	_	_
23	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	26	punct	_	_
24	slang	slang	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	nsubj	_	_
25	also	also	ADV	RB	_	26	advmod	_	_
26	differs	differ	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	parataxis	_	_
27	by	by	ADP	IN	_	28	case	_	_
28	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	obl	_	_
29	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	34	punct	_	_
30	from	from	ADP	IN	_	34	case	_	_
31	London	London	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	34	nmod:poss	_	_
32	's	's	PART	POS	_	31	case	_	_
33	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	34	punct	_	_
34	peng	peng	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	obl	_	_
35	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	34	punct	_	_
36	to	to	ADP	IN	_	40	case	_	_
37	Canada	Canada	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	40	nmod:poss	_	_
38	's	's	PART	POS	_	37	case	_	_
39	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	40	punct	_	_
40	toque	toque	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	obl	_	_
41	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	40	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=26:punct
42	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	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 | **drift** | present | Ordinary words |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **mean** | past |  |  |  |  |  | foolish, once *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** | might | today's slang | tomorrow's plain word |  |  | tomorrow |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **differ** | present | slang |  |  |  |  | by place; to Canada's toque; from London's peng | vn differ-23.4 «NP V PP.co-theme»: agent=Theme from peng=Co-Theme |
| 5 | **slang** |  | today |  |  |  |  |  | nom slang «communication transitive»: poss=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:017-slang-and-how-it-changes-with-every-generation.lesson:4`.

**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): R6-punct-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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