---
title: «I wouldn't say no to a biscuit» is a polite yes, so pass the biscui… — Not unhappy and not half: litotes · tree and pragmatics
description: «I wouldn't say no to a biscuit» is a polite yes, so pass the biscuits. Who acts: dry way. A sentence of the lesson «Not unhappy and not half: litotes» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Not unhappy and not half: litotes, sentence 16

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
«I wouldn't say no to a biscuit» is a polite yes, so pass the biscuits.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** dry way · **What happens:** not say, be, pass · **To what, where:** biscuit, polite yes, biscuits · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Not unhappy and not half: litotes» 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 (dry way), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:050-not-unhappy-and-not-half-litotes.lesson:16
# text = «I wouldn't say no to a biscuit» is a polite yes, so pass the biscuits.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 050-not-unhappy-and-not-half-litotes.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 ×2, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=14:punct
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	csubj	_	_
6	no	no	INTJ	UH	Polarity=Neg	5	discourse	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=5:obj|HaikuPos=NOUN:NN:Polarity=Neg
7	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	biscuit	biscuit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
10	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=14:punct
11	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	polite	polite	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	yes	yes	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
16	so	so	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
17	pass	pass	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	conj	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	biscuits	biscuit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	obj	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	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 | **not** **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | would | a dry way *= way* |  | a biscuit |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to biscuit=Recipient |
| 2 | **is a** | present |  | a polite yes |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **pass** | infinitive |  | the biscuits |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1-3 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme biscuit=Trajectory |

<!-- .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:050-not-unhappy-and-not-half-litotes.lesson:16`.

**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 ×2, R7-rel-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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