---
title: If a friend has done damage, such as scratching a teacher's car, a g… — Whistle-blowing: when to tell · tree and pragmatics
description: If a friend has done damage, such as scratching a teacher's car, a good first step is to encourage them to own up. Who acts: friend, damage, friends. A sentence of the lesson «Whistle-blowing: when to tell» of the religion ethics course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragm
---

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# Whistle-blowing: when to tell, sentence 10

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If a friend has done damage, such as scratching a teacher's car, a good first step is to encourage them to own up.

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**Who acts:** friend, damage, friends · **What happens:** do, scratch, be, encourage, own up · **To what, where:** damage, car, good first step, friends

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Whistle-blowing: when to tell» 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 (friend, damage, friends), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:religion-ethics:045-whistle-blowing-when-to-tell.lesson:10
# text = If a friend has done damage, such as scratching a teacher's car, a good first step is to encourage them to own up.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = religion-ethics
# lesson = 045-whistle-blowing-when-to-tell.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	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	friend	friend	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	has	have	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	done	do	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	19	advcl	_	_
6	damage	damage	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
8	such	such	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|ExtPos=SCONJ	10	mark	_	_
9	as	as	ADP	IN	_	8	fixed	_	_
10	scratching	scratch	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	acl	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	teacher	teacher	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod:poss	_	_
13	's	's	PART	POS	_	12	case	_	_
14	car	car	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
17	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
18	first	first	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	19	amod	_	_
19	step	step	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
20	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
21	to	to	PART	TO	_	22	mark	_	_
22	encourage	encourage	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	19	xcomp	_	_
23	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	obj	_	_
24	to	to	PART	TO	_	25	mark	_	_
25	own	own	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	22	xcomp	_	_
26	up	up	ADP	RP	_	25	compound:prt	_	_
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	19	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 | **do** *a condition, not said to happen* | present · perfect | a friend | damage |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent damage=Eventuality |
| 2 | **scratch** | gerund | damage *not said here* | a teacher's car |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent car=Theme |
| 3 | **is a** | present |  | a good first step |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **encourage** | to-infinitive |  | friends *= friend* |  |  |  |  | vn advise-37.9 «NP V NP how S\_INF»: agent=Agent they=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 5 | **own up** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | friends *= friend* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn own-100.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot |

<!-- .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:religion-ethics:045-whistle-blowing-when-to-tell.lesson:10`.

**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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