Soft words for hard things: death and dying, sentence 1

Death is the thing people soften most: at a funeral nobody says "Grandad is dead", they say "Grandad passed away" or "he is no longer with us", to be kind to the family.

Who acts: Death, people, nobody, Grandad · What happens: be, soften, say, pass away · To what, where: thing · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: death and dying» of the euphemisms 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 (Death, people, nobody, Grandad), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

The tree

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Death	death	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 thing	nsubj
2	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 thing	cop
3	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	4 thing	det
4	thing	thing	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
5	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 soften	nsubj
6	soften	soften	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 thing	acl:relcl
7	most	most	ADV	Degree=Sup	6 soften	advmod
8	:	:	PUNCT	_	4 thing	punct
9	at	at	ADP	_	11 funeral	case
10	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	11 funeral	det
11	funeral	funeral	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 nobody	obl
12	nobody	nobody	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Neg	13 says	nsubj
13	says	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 thing	parataxis
14	"	"	PUNCT	_	17 dead	punct
15	Grandad	Grandad	PROPN	Number=Sing	17 dead	nsubj
16	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	17 dead	cop
17	dead	dead	ADJ	Degree=Pos	13 says	ccomp
18	"	"	PUNCT	_	17 dead	punct
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 say	punct
20	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 say	nsubj
21	say	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	13 says	ccomp
22	"	"	PUNCT	_	24 passed	punct
23	Grandad	Grandad	PROPN	Number=Sing	24 passed	nsubj
24	passed	pass	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	21 say	ccomp
25	away	away	ADV	_	24 passed	advmod
26	"	"	PUNCT	_	24 passed	punct
27	or	or	CCONJ	_	28 "	cc
28	"	"	PUNCT	_	24 passed	punct
29	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	34 us	nsubj
30	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	34 us	cop
31	no	no	ADV	_	32 longer	advmod
32	longer	long	ADV	Degree=Cmp	34 us	advmod
33	with	with	ADP	_	34 us	case
34	us	we	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	24 passed	obl
35	"	"	PUNCT	_	24 passed	punct
36	,	,	PUNCT	_	39 kind	punct
37	to	to	PART	_	39 kind	mark
38	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	39 kind	cop
39	kind	kind	ADJ	Degree=Pos	21 say	advcl
40	to	to	ADP	_	42 family	case
41	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	42 family	det
42	family	family	NOUN	Number=Sing	39 kind	obl
43	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 thing	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	is a	present	Death	the thing		tree rules
2	soften	present	people	the thing not said here		vn other_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent thing=Patient
3	say speech: assert	present	nobody			vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
4	is in a quote	present	Grandad		dead property	tree rules
5	say speech: assert	present	people			vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
6	pass away in a quote	past	Grandad		away property	vn die-42.4-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient
7	is in a quote	present	Grandad		with us; long property	tree rules
8	is	to-infinitive	people not said here		to the family; kind property	tree rules

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.

Licence: CC 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:euphemisms:001-death-polite-and-joking.lesson:1.

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 ×1, R8-pos-agree ×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.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/1-death-polite-and-joking/1/