---
title: The wise way is to promise only what lies within your power, be clea… — Keeping promises · tree and pragmatics
description: The wise way is to promise only what lies within your power, be clear about when, and keep small promises faithfully even when nobody would find out. Who acts: wise way, nobody. A sentence of the lesson «Keeping promises» of the religion ethics course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tre
---

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# Keeping promises, sentence 4

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The wise way is to promise only what lies within your power, be clear about when, and keep small promises faithfully even when nobody would find out.

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**Who acts:** wise way, nobody · **What happens:** be, lie, keep, find out · **To what, where:** small promises · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Keeping promises» 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 (wise way, nobody), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:religion-ethics:086-keeping-promises.lesson:4
# text = The wise way is to promise only what lies within your power, be clear about when, and keep small promises faithfully even when nobody would find out.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = religion-ethics
# lesson = 086-keeping-promises.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): R5-strong ×2
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	wise	wise	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
4	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	promise	promise	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	only	only	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=9:advmod
8	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	9	nsubj	_	_
9	lies	lie	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	ccomp	_	_
10	within	within	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	power	power	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	cop	_	_
15	clear	clear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	conj	_	_
16	about	about	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	15	obl	_	_
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
20	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
21	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	promises	promise	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obj	_	_
23	faithfully	faithfully	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=28:advmod
24	even	even	ADV	RB	_	28	advmod	_	_
25	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	28	advmod	_	_
26	nobody	nobody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	28	nsubj	_	_
27	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	28	aux	_	_
28	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	advcl	_	_
29	out	out	ADP	RP	_	28	compound:prt	_	_
30	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** *speech: promise* | present | the wise way |  |  |  |  | promise *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **lie** | present |  |  |  |  |  | within your power | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** | infinitive | the wise way *not said here* |  |  |  |  | clear *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **keep** | infinitive | the wise way *not said here* | small promises |  |  |  | faithfully *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent promise=Theme |
| 5 | **find out** | would | nobody |  |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V PP.topic»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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:086-keeping-promises.lesson:4`.

**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): R5-strong ×2. **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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