---
title: Literally first meant exactly, really happening; for hundreds of yea… — Adjectives and adverbs: describing things and ac… · tree and pragmatics
description: Literally first meant exactly, really happening; for hundreds of years writers, Charles Dickens among them, have also used it just to make things stronger, and some dictionaries list both meanings. Who acts: writers, dictionaries. A sentence of the lesson «Adjectives and adverbs: describing things a
---

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# Adjectives and adverbs: describing things and actions, sentence 17

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Literally first meant exactly, really happening; for hundreds of years writers, Charles Dickens among them, have also used it just to make things stronger, and some dictionaries list both meanings.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** writers, dictionaries · **What happens:** mean, happen, use, make, list · **To what, where:** bare, things, meanings

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Adjectives and adverbs: describing things and actions» 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 (writers, dictionaries), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:004-adjectives-and-adverbs.lesson:17
# text = Literally first meant exactly, really happening; for hundreds of years writers, Charles Dickens among them, have also used it just to make things stronger, and some dictionaries list both meanings.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 004-adjectives-and-adverbs.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	Literally	literally	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	3	advmod	_	_
3	meant	mean	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	22	advcl	_	_
4	exactly	exactly	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	really	really	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	happening	happen	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	advcl	_	_
8	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	for	for	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	hundreds	hundred	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	22	obl	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nmod	_	_
13	writers	writer	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	22	nsubj	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
15	Charles	Charles	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	appos	_	_
16	Dickens	Dickens	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	15	flat	_	_
17	among	among	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nmod	_	_
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
20	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	22	aux	_	_
21	also	also	ADV	RB	_	22	advmod	_	_
22	used	use	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
23	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	obj	_	_
24	just	just	ADV	RB	_	26	advmod	_	_
25	to	to	PART	TO	_	26	mark	_	_
26	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	22	advcl	_	_
27	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	26	obj	_	_
28	stronger	strong	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	26	xcomp	_	_
29	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	33	punct	_	_
30	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	33	cc	_	_
31	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	32	det	_	_
32	dictionaries	dictionary	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	33	nsubj	_	_
33	list	list	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	22	conj	_	_
34	both	both	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	35	det	_	_
35	meanings	meaning	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	33	obj	_	_
36	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=22:punct
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** | past | writers *not said here* |  |  |  |  | exactly, first, literally *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **happen** | gerund | writers *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **use** | present · perfect | writers | bare |  |  |  | for hundreds of years | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP PP.predicate»: agent=Agent it=Theme for hundred=Eventuality |
| 4 | **make** | to-infinitive | writers *not said here* | things |  |  |  | strong *property* | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset thing=Product |
| 5 | **list** | present | some dictionaries | both meanings |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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:004-adjectives-and-adverbs.lesson:17`.

**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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