--- title: "Cost an arm and a leg" means cost a lot of money; it is a deliberat… — Idioms taken literally · tree and pragmatics description: "Cost an arm and a leg" means cost a lot of money; it is a deliberate exaggeration, called hyperbole. Who acts: lot, deliberate exaggeration. 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/8/) [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/) / 8 # Idioms taken literally, sentence 8 "Cost an arm and a leg" means cost a lot of money; it is a deliberate exaggeration, called hyperbole. **Who acts:** lot, deliberate exaggeration · **What happens:** cost, mean, be, call · **To what, where:** arm, lot, deliberate exaggeration, hyperbole · **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 (lot, deliberate exaggeration), 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:8 # text = "Cost an arm and a leg" means cost a lot of money; it is a deliberate exaggeration, called hyperbole. # 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): R1-cc-next ×1, R6-punct-agree ×2 1 " " PUNCT `` _ 2 punct _ _ 2 Cost cost VERB VB Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin 9 nsubj _ _ 3 an a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 4 det _ _ 4 arm arm NOUN NN Number=Sing 2 obj _ _ 5 and and CCONJ CC _ 7 cc _ Agree=R1-cc-next|Haiku=4:cc 6 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 7 det _ _ 7 leg leg NOUN NN Number=Sing 4 conj _ _ 8 " " PUNCT '' _ 2 punct _ Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=7:punct 9 means mean VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 0 root _ _ 10 cost cost VERB VB VerbForm=Inf 9 ccomp _ _ 11 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 12 det _ _ 12 lot lot NOUN NN Number=Sing 10 obj _ _ 13 of of ADP IN _ 14 case _ _ 14 money money NOUN NN Number=Sing 12 nmod _ _ 15 ; ; PUNCT , _ 20 punct _ _ 16 it it PRON PRP Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs 20 nsubj _ _ 17 is be AUX VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 20 cop _ _ 18 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 20 det _ _ 19 deliberate deliberate ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 20 amod _ _ 20 exaggeration exaggeration NOUN NN Number=Sing 9 parataxis _ _ 21 , , PUNCT , _ 22 punct _ _ 22 called call VERB VBN Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass 20 acl _ _ 23 hyperbole hyperbole NOUN NN Number=Sing 22 xcomp _ _ 24 . . PUNCT . _ 9 punct _ Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=2: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 | **cost** *in a quote* | infinitive | | a arm and a leg | | | | | vn cost-54.2 «NP V NP.value»: agent=Theme arm=Value | | 2 | **mean** | present | | | | | | | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | | 3 | **cost** | infinitive | | a lot of money | | | | | vn cost-54.2 «NP V NP.value»: agent=Theme lot=Value | | 4 | **is a** | present | lot | a deliberate exaggeration | | | | | tree rules | | 5 | **call** | participle | a deliberate exaggeration *not said here* | hyperbole | | | | | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | 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:8`. **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): R1-cc-next ×1, R6-punct-agree ×2. **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, 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/7/) - next →: [Idioms taken literally, 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/9/) - ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/)