---
title: Understatement is the opposite of hyperbole: it makes things sound S… — A bit nippy and not ideal: British understatement · tree and pragmatics
description: Understatement is the opposite of hyperbole: it makes things sound SMALLER than they are. Who acts: Understatement, things. A sentence of the lesson «A bit nippy and not ideal: British understatement» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of ever
---

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# A bit nippy and not ideal: British understatement, sentence 0

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Understatement is the opposite of hyperbole: it makes things sound SMALLER than they are.

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**Who acts:** Understatement, things · **What happens:** be, make, sound · **To what, where:** opposite, things

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This is a sentence of the lesson «A bit nippy and not ideal: British understatement» 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 (Understatement, things), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:049-a-bit-nippy-and-not-ideal-british-understatement.lesson:0
# text = Understatement is the opposite of hyperbole: it makes things sound SMALLER than they are.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 049-a-bit-nippy-and-not-ideal-british-understatement.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): no change
1	Understatement	understatement	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	opposite	opposite	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	hyperbole	hyperbole	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	_
7	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	9	punct	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	makes	make	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
10	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	_
11	sound	sound	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	_
12	SMALLER	small	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	11	xcomp	_	_
13	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
14	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	are	be	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | Understatement | the opposite |  |  |  | of hyperbole | tree rules |
| 2 | **make** | present | Understatement | things |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **sound** | infinitive | things *not said here* |  |  |  |  | small *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |
| 4 | **does** | present | things *= thing* |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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:049-a-bit-nippy-and-not-ideal-british-understatement.lesson:0`.

**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): no change. **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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