---
title: Money is only useful when someone has something to sell; a pile of c… — What money is and why people accept it · tree and pragmatics
description: Money is only useful when someone has something to sell; a pile of coins on a desert island buys nothing. Who acts: Money, someone, pile. A sentence of the lesson «What money is and why people accept it» of the money course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of ever
---

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# What money is and why people accept it, sentence 15

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Money is only useful when someone has something to sell; a pile of coins on a desert island buys nothing.

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**Who acts:** Money, someone, pile · **What happens:** be, have, sell, buy · **To what, where:** something, nothing

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This is a sentence of the lesson «What money is and why people accept it» of the money 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 (Money, someone, pile), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:money:001-what-money-is-and-why-people-accept-it.lesson:15
# text = Money is only useful when someone has something to sell; a pile of coins on a desert island buys nothing.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = money
# lesson = 001-what-money-is-and-why-people-accept-it.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	Money	money	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	only	only	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	useful	useful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	_
6	someone	someone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	7	nsubj	_	_
7	has	have	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
8	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	7	obj	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	sell	sell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	acl	_	_
11	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	pile	pile	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nsubj	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	coins	coin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nmod	_	_
16	on	on	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
18	desert	desert	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	compound	_	_
19	island	island	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	_
20	buys	buy	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
21	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	20	obj	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
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** | present | Money |  |  |  |  | useful *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** | present | someone | something |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent something=Patient |
| 3 | **sell** | to-infinitive | someone *not said here* | something *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V PP.recipient»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **buy** | present | a pile of coins on a desert island | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn accept-77.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=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:money:001-what-money-is-and-why-people-accept-it.lesson:15`.

**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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- ← previous: [What money is and why people accept it, 13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/money/1-what-money-is-and-why-people-accept-it/13/)
- next →: [Coins and notes: pounds and pence, dol…, 0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/money/2-coins-and-notes-pounds-and-pence-dollars-and-cents/0/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/money/1-what-money-is-and-why-people-accept-it/)