---
title: If someone says "they said this about you", ask the person directly… — The rumour that grows · tree and pragmatics
description: If someone says "they said this about you", ask the person directly and kindly before getting upset. Who acts: someone, ups, person. A sentence of the lesson «The rumour that grows» of the world course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The rumour that grows, sentence 19

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If someone says "they said this about you", ask the person directly and kindly before getting upset.

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**Who acts:** someone, ups, person · **What happens:** say, ask, get · **To what, where:** this · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «The rumour that grows» of the world 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 (someone, ups, person), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:world:167-the-rumour-that-grows.lesson:19
# text = If someone says "they said this about you", ask the person directly and kindly before getting upset.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = world
# lesson = 167-the-rumour-that-grows.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, R6-punct-agree ×3
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	someone	someone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	3	nsubj	_	_
3	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=0:root
4	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=3:punct
5	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	ccomp	_	_
7	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	obj	_	_
8	about	about	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	obl	_	_
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=3:punct
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
12	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=3:conj
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
15	directly	directly	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	kindly	kindly	ADV	RB	_	15	conj	_	_
18	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	19	mark	_	_
19	getting	get	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	12	advcl	_	_
20	upset	upset	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	xcomp	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=3: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 | **say** *speech: assert* *a condition, not said to happen* | present | someone |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | ups *= up* | this |  |  |  | about you | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent this=Topic |
| 3 | **ask** *speech: ask* | imperative | the person |  |  |  |  | directly *property* | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **get** | gerund | the person *not said here* |  |  |  |  | upset *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer |

<!-- .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:world:167-the-rumour-that-grows.lesson:19`.

**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, R6-punct-agree ×3. **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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