--- title: Litotes is understatement made with «not» or «no» plus the opposite… — Not unhappy and not half: litotes · tree and pragmatics description: Litotes is understatement made with «not» or «no» plus the opposite word: «not bad» for good, «not unhappy» for happy, «no small thing» for a big thing. Who acts: Litotes. A sentence of the lesson «Not unhappy and not half: litotes» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/50-not-unhappy-and-not-half-litotes/7/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / [Not unhappy and not half: litotes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/50-not-unhappy-and-not-half-litotes/) / 7 # Not unhappy and not half: litotes, sentence 7 Litotes is understatement made with «not» or «no» plus the opposite word: «not bad» for good, «not unhappy» for happy, «no small thing» for a big thing. **Who acts:** Litotes · **What happens:** be, make · **To what, where:** understatement 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 (Litotes), 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:7 # text = Litotes is understatement made with «not» or «no» plus the opposite word: «not bad» for good, «not unhappy» for happy, «no small thing» for a big thing. # 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): R1-cc-next ×2, R5-strong ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1 1 Litotes litote NOUN NNS Number=Plur 3 nsubj _ _ 2 is be AUX VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 3 cop _ _ 3 understatement understatement NOUN NN Number=Sing 0 root _ _ 4 made make VERB VBN Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass 3 acl _ _ 5 with with ADP IN _ 7 case _ _ 6 « « PUNCT `` _ 7 punct _ _ 7 not not ADV RB Polarity=Neg 4 obl _ _ 8 » » PUNCT '' _ 7 punct _ _ 9 or or CCONJ CC _ 11 cc _ Agree=R1-cc-next|Haiku=7:cc 10 « « PUNCT `` _ 11 punct _ _ 11 no no DET DT PronType=Neg 7 conj _ _ 12 » » PUNCT '' _ 11 punct _ _ 13 plus plus CCONJ CC _ 16 cc _ Agree=R1-cc-next|Haiku=7:cc 14 the the DET DT Definite=Def|PronType=Art 16 det _ _ 15 opposite opposite ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 16 amod _ _ 16 word word NOUN NN Number=Sing 7 conj _ _ 17 : : PUNCT : _ 3 punct _ _ 18 « « PUNCT `` _ 20 punct _ _ 19 not not PART RB Polarity=Neg 20 advmod _ _ 20 bad bad ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 3 parataxis _ _ 21 » » PUNCT '' _ 20 punct _ _ 22 for for ADP IN _ 23 case _ _ 23 good good ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 20 obl _ _ 24 , , PUNCT , _ 27 punct _ _ 25 « « PUNCT `` _ 27 punct _ _ 26 not not PART RB Polarity=Neg 27 advmod _ _ 27 unhappy unhappy ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 20 conj _ Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=20:parataxis 28 » » PUNCT '' _ 27 punct _ _ 29 for for ADP IN _ 30 case _ _ 30 happy happy ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 27 conj _ _ 31 , , PUNCT , _ 35 punct _ _ 32 « « PUNCT `` _ 35 punct _ _ 33 no no DET DT PronType=Neg 35 det _ _ 34 small small ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 35 amod _ _ 35 thing thing NOUN NN Number=Sing 27 conj _ _ 36 » » PUNCT '' _ 35 punct _ _ 37 for for ADP IN _ 40 case _ _ 38 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 40 det _ _ 39 big big ADJ JJ Degree=Pos 40 amod _ _ 40 thing thing NOUN NN Number=Sing 35 nmod _ Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=20:obl 41 . . PUNCT . _ 3 punct _ _ ``` ## Pragmatics {#pragmatics} No stored speech act for this sentence. | # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | **is a** | present | Litotes | understatement | | | | | tree rules | | 2 | **make** | participle | | understatement *not said here* | | | | | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset | 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. **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:7`. **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): R1-cc-next ×2, R5-strong ×1, 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/). - ← previous: [Not unhappy and not half: litotes, 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/50-not-unhappy-and-not-half-litotes/5/) - next →: [Not unhappy and not half: litotes, 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/50-not-unhappy-and-not-half-litotes/8/) - ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/50-not-unhappy-and-not-half-litotes/)