---
title: «That was no small thing» means it was a big and brave thing to do;… — Not unhappy and not half: litotes · tree and pragmatics
description: «That was no small thing» means it was a big and brave thing to do; it is praise. Who acts: That, jar. 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 18

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«That was no small thing» means it was a big and brave thing to do; it is praise.

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**Who acts:** That, jar · **What happens:** be, mean, do · **To what, where:** small thing, big thing, praise · **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 (That, jar), 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:18
# text = «That was no small thing» means it was a big and brave thing to do; it is praise.
# 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): R7-rel-agree ×2
1	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	_
2	That	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	6	det	_	_
5	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	ccomp	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=8:csubj
7	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
8	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
12	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	brave	brave	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	conj	_	_
15	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	ccomp	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	acl	_	_
18	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
20	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	21	cop	_	_
21	praise	praise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=8:conj
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- 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 | **is a** *in a quote* | past | That | no small thing |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **mean** | present |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** | past | jar | a big thing |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **do** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **is a** | present | jar | praise |  |  |  |  | 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:050-not-unhappy-and-not-half-litotes.lesson:18`.

**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): R7-rel-agree ×2. **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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- ← previous: [Not unhappy and not half: litotes, 17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/50-not-unhappy-and-not-half-litotes/17/)
- next →: [Just a scratch and I'm fine: when to w…, 0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/51-just-a-scratch-and-i-m-fine-when-to-worry-and-tell-an-adult/0/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/50-not-unhappy-and-not-half-litotes/)