--- title: "Beat about the bush" means avoid saying something directly; it come… — Idioms taken literally · tree and pragmatics description: "Beat about the bush" means avoid saying something directly; it comes from hunters beating bushes to scare birds out. Who acts: origin. A sentence of the lesson «Idioms taken literally» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/7/) [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/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / [Idioms taken literally](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/) / 7 # Idioms taken literally, sentence 7 "Beat about the bush" means avoid saying something directly; it comes from hunters beating bushes to scare birds out. **Who acts:** origin · **What happens:** beat, mean, avoid, say, come, scare out · **To what, where:** something, hunters, bushes, birds · **Speech:** someone speaks here This is a sentence of the lesson «Idioms taken literally» 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 (origin), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree. ## The tree {#tree} ```conllu # sent_id = school:language:025-idioms-taken-literally.lesson:7 # text = "Beat about the bush" means avoid saying something directly; it comes from hunters beating bushes to scare birds out. # source = school lesson (ours) # course = language # lesson = 025-idioms-taken-literally.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): R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1 1 " " PUNCT `` _ 2 punct _ _ 2 Beat beat VERB VB VerbForm=Inf 7 nsubj _ _ 3 about about ADP IN _ 5 case _ _ 4 the the DET DT Definite=Def|PronType=Art 5 det _ _ 5 bush bush NOUN NN Number=Sing 2 obl _ _ 6 " " PUNCT '' _ 2 punct _ _ 7 means mean VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 0 root _ _ 8 avoid avoid VERB VB VerbForm=Inf 7 ccomp _ _ 9 saying say VERB VBG Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part 8 xcomp _ _ 10 something something PRON NN Number=Sing|PronType=Ind 9 obj _ _ 11 directly directly ADV RB _ 9 advmod _ Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=10:advmod 12 ; ; PUNCT , _ 14 punct _ _ 13 it it PRON PRP Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs 14 nsubj _ _ 14 comes come VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 7 parataxis _ _ 15 from from ADP IN _ 16 case _ _ 16 hunters hunter NOUN NNS Number=Plur 14 obl _ _ 17 beating beat VERB VBG Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part 14 advcl _ _ 18 bushes bush NOUN NNS Number=Plur 17 obj _ _ 19 to to PART TO _ 20 mark _ _ 20 scare scare VERB VB VerbForm=Inf 17 advcl _ _ 21 birds bird NOUN NNS Number=Plur 20 obj _ _ 22 out out ADP RP _ 20 compound:prt _ Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=20:advmod|HaikuPos=ADV:RB:_ 23 . . PUNCT . _ 7 punct _ Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=9:punct ``` ## Pragmatics {#pragmatics} - form: statement - act: assert - voice: narrator - polarity: none - teacher: changed form=decl, act=assert, voice=narrator | # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | **beat** *in a quote* | infinitive | | | | | | about the bush | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme about bush=Location | | 2 | **mean** | present | | | | | | | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | | 3 | **avoid** | infinitive | | | | | | | vn avoid-52 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Theme | | 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | gerund | | something | | | | directly *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent something=Topic | | 5 | **come** | present | origin | | | hunters | | | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme from hunter=Initial\_Location | | 6 | **beat** | gerund | origin *not said here* | bushes | | | | | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location bush=Theme | | 7 | **scare out** | to-infinitive | origin *not said here* | birds | | | | | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus bird=Experiencer | 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. **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:025-idioms-taken-literally.lesson:7`. **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): R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×1, 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/). - ← previous: [Idioms taken literally, 6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/6/) - next →: [Idioms taken literally, 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/8/) - ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/)