---
title: A straw man changes what someone said into something more extreme, t… — The politician's either-or and the straw man · tree and pragmatics
description: A straw man changes what someone said into something more extreme, then attacks that instead of the real idea. Who acts: straw man, someone. A sentence of the lesson «The politician's either-or and the straw man» of the world course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatic
---

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# The politician's either-or and the straw man, sentence 10

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A straw man changes what someone said into something more extreme, then attacks that instead of the real idea.

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**Who acts:** straw man, someone · **What happens:** change, say, attack · **To what, where:** something, that · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «The politician's either-or and the straw man» 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 (straw man, someone), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:world:178-the-politicians-either-or-and-the-straw-man.lesson:10
# text = A straw man changes what someone said into something more extreme, then attacks that instead of the real idea.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = world
# lesson = 178-the-politicians-either-or-and-the-straw-man.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	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	straw	straw	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	changes	change	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	7	obj	_	_
6	someone	someone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	7	nsubj	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	_
8	into	into	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	7	obl	_	_
10	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	11	advmod	_	_
11	extreme	extreme	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	14	advmod	_	_
14	attacks	attack	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
15	that	that	PRON	DT	PronType=Dem	14	obj	_	_
16	instead	instead	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
17	of	of	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
19	real	real	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	idea	idea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **change** | present | a straw man |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | someone |  |  | something |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=Topic |
| 3 | **attack** | present | a straw man *not said here* | that |  |  | then | of the real idea | vn attack-60.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent that=Patient |

<!-- .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:178-the-politicians-either-or-and-the-straw-man.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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