---
title: Picture the family car with a flat tyre on the motorway at night, in… — A bit nippy and not ideal: British understatement · tree and pragmatics
description: Picture the family car with a flat tyre on the motorway at night, in the rain, and Dad saying «Well. Who acts: you, Dad. 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 every c
---

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# A bit nippy and not ideal: British understatement, sentence 3

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Picture the family car with a flat tyre on the motorway at night, in the rain, and Dad saying «Well.

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**Who acts:** you, Dad · **What happens:** picture, say · **To what, where:** family car, motorway · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (you, Dad), 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:3
# text = Picture the family car with a flat tyre on the motorway at night, in the rain, and Dad saying «Well.
# 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): R6-punct-agree ×1
1	Picture	picture	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	family	family	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	car	car	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obj	_	_
5	with	with	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	flat	flat	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	tyre	tyre	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
9	on	on	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	motorway	motorway	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
12	at	at	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
15	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	rain	rain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	conj	_	_
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=20:punct
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
20	Dad	dad	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nsubj	_	_
21	saying	say	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	1	conj	_	_
22	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	21	punct	_	_
23	Well	well	INTJ	UH	_	21	discourse	_	_
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	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 | **picture** | imperative | you *not said here* | the family car |  | the motorway | night | with a flat tyre | vn characterize-29.2 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent car=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | gerund | Dad |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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: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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