---
title: Common ground is what both sides agree on; finding it first makes a… — How to argue: counter-arguments and respect · tree and pragmatics
description: Common ground is what both sides agree on; finding it first makes a discussion calmer. Who acts: Common ground, sides, finding. A sentence of the lesson «How to argue: counter-arguments and respect» of the religion ethics course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of
---

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# How to argue: counter-arguments and respect, sentence 15

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Common ground is what both sides agree on; finding it first makes a discussion calmer.

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**Who acts:** Common ground, sides, finding · **What happens:** be, agree on, find, make · **To what, where:** side, discussion

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This is a sentence of the lesson «How to argue: counter-arguments and respect» of the religion ethics 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 (Common ground, sides, finding), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:religion-ethics:040-how-to-argue-counter-arguments-and-respect.lesson:15
# text = Common ground is what both sides agree on; finding it first makes a discussion calmer.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = religion-ethics
# lesson = 040-how-to-argue-counter-arguments-and-respect.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	Common	common	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	13	parataxis	_	_
5	both	both	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	6	det	_	_
6	sides	side	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	agree	agree	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	acl:relcl	_	_
8	on	on	ADP	RP	_	7	compound:prt	_	_
9	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	finding	find	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	13	csubj	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	_
12	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	10	advmod	_	_
13	makes	make	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	discussion	discussion	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
16	calmer	calm	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	13	xcomp	_	_
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=13:punct
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | Common ground |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **agree on** *speech: agree* | present | both sides |  |  |  |  |  | vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **find** | gerund |  | side |  |  |  | first *property* | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Topic |
| 4 | **make** | present | finding | a discussion |  |  |  | calm *property* | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset discussion=Product |

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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:religion-ethics:040-how-to-argue-counter-arguments-and-respect.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): 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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- ← previous: [How to argue: counter-arguments and re…, 14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/religion-ethics/40-how-to-argue-counter-arguments-and-respect/14/)
- next →: [How to argue: counter-arguments and re…, 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/religion-ethics/40-how-to-argue-counter-arguments-and-respect/16/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/religion-ethics/40-how-to-argue-counter-arguments-and-respect/)