---
title: Choosing only the "most useful" people is often criticised as unfair… — Lifeboat choices · tree and pragmatics
description: Choosing only the "most useful" people is often criticised as unfair, because every person has equal worth. Who acts: Choosing, person. A sentence of the lesson «Lifeboat choices» of the religion ethics course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Lifeboat choices, sentence 8

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Choosing only the "most useful" people is often criticised as unfair, because every person has equal worth.

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**Who acts:** Choosing, person · **What happens:** choose, criticise, have · **To what, where:** useful people, equal worth

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Lifeboat choices» 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 (Choosing, person), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:religion-ethics:048-lifeboat-choices.lesson:8
# text = Choosing only the "most useful" people is often criticised as unfair, because every person has equal worth.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = religion-ethics
# lesson = 048-lifeboat-choices.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 ×2, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	Choosing	choose	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	11	csubj	_	_
2	only	only	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
4	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=8:punct
5	most	most	ADV	RBS	Degree=Sup	6	advmod	_	_
6	useful	useful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=8:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:``:_
8	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	obj	_	_
9	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux:pass	_	_
10	often	often	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	criticised	criticise	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
12	as	as	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	unfair	unfair	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	obl	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
15	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
16	every	every	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	17	det	_	_
17	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
18	has	have	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=11:conj
19	equal	equal	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	worth	worth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: evaluate
- voice: narrator
- polarity: neg
- teacher: changed act=evaluate, polarity=neg

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **choose** | gerund |  | the useful people |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent people=Theme |
| 2 | **criticise** | present · passive | Choosing |  |  |  |  | as unfair; often *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **have** | present | every person | equal worth |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent worth=Patient |

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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:048-lifeboat-choices.lesson:8`.

**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 ×2, 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/).

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