---
title: Faces matter as much as hands: raised eyebrows can turn a sentence i… — Sign language · tree and pragmatics
description: Faces matter as much as hands: raised eyebrows can turn a sentence into a question, so a signer's expressions are grammar, not rudeness. Who acts: Faces, raised eyebrows, expressions. A sentence of the lesson «Sign language» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree an
---

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# Sign language, sentence 3

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Faces matter as much as hands: raised eyebrows can turn a sentence into a question, so a signer's expressions are grammar, not rudeness.

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**Who acts:** Faces, raised eyebrows, expressions · **What happens:** matter, raise, turn, be · **To what, where:** sentence, question, grammar

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Sign language» 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 (Faces, raised eyebrows, expressions), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:032-sign-language.lesson:3
# text = Faces matter as much as hands: raised eyebrows can turn a sentence into a question, so a signer's expressions are grammar, not rudeness.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 032-sign-language.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	Faces	face	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
2	matter	matter	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	as	as	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
5	as	as	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	hands	hand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
7	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	2	punct	_	_
8	raised	raise	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	amod	_	_
9	eyebrows	eyebrow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
10	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	turn	turn	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	parataxis	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	sentence	sentence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	into	into	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	question	question	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
18	so	so	ADV	RB	_	24	advmod	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	signer	signer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	nmod:poss	_	_
21	's	's	PART	POS	_	20	case	_	_
22	expressions	expression	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	24	nsubj	_	_
23	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	24	cop	_	_
24	grammar	grammar	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	appos	_	_
25	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
26	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	27	advmod	_	_
27	rudeness	rudeness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	conj	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=24: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 | **matter** | present | Faces |  |  |  |  |  | vn matter-91 «NP V»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **raise** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **turn** | can | raised eyebrows | a sentence |  | a question |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP PP.trajectory»: agent=Agent sentence=Theme into question=Trajectory |
| 4 | **is a** | present | a signer's expressions | grammar and rudeness |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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:language:032-sign-language.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): 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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