Soft words for hard things: death and dying, sentence 3
So the same fact, "he died", can be said kindly, formally, in old-fashioned words or as a joke, and a clever listener hears both what happened and how the speaker feels about it.
Who acts: word, clever listener, speaker · What happens: die, say, hear, happen, feel · To what, where: same fact, fashioned words · 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 (word, clever listener, speaker), 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 | So | so | ADV | _ | 13 said | advmod |
| 2 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 4 fact | det |
| 3 | same | same | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 4 fact | amod |
| 4 | fact | fact | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 said | nsubj:pass |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 4 fact | punct |
| 6 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 8 died | punct |
| 7 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 8 died | nsubj |
| 8 | died | die | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 fact | acl |
| 9 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 8 died | punct |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 4 fact | punct |
| 11 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 13 said | aux |
| 12 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 13 said | aux:pass |
| 13 | said | say | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 14 | kindly | kindly | ADV | _ | 13 said | advmod |
| 15 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 16 formally | punct |
| 16 | formally | formally | ADV | _ | 13 said | advmod |
| 17 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 22 words | punct |
| 18 | in | in | ADP | _ | 22 words | case |
| 19 | old | old | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 21 fashioned | amod |
| 20 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 19 old | punct |
| 21 | fashioned | fashioned | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 22 words | amod |
| 22 | words | word | NOUN | Number=Plur | 13 said | obl |
| 23 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 26 joke | cc |
| 24 | as | as | ADP | _ | 26 joke | case |
| 25 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 26 joke | det |
| 26 | joke | joke | NOUN | Number=Sing | 22 words | conj |
| 27 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 32 hears | punct |
| 28 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 32 hears | cc |
| 29 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 31 listener | det |
| 30 | clever | clever | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 31 listener | amod |
| 31 | listener | listener | NOUN | Number=Sing | 32 hears | nsubj |
| 32 | hears | hear | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 13 said | conj |
| 33 | both | both | CCONJ | _ | 34 what | cc:preconj |
| 34 | what | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 35 happened | nsubj |
| 35 | happened | happen | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 32 hears | acl:relcl |
| 36 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 40 feels | cc |
| 37 | how | how | ADV | PronType=Int | 40 feels | advmod |
| 38 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 39 speaker | det |
| 39 | speaker | speaker | NOUN | Number=Sing | 40 feels | nsubj |
| 40 | feels | feel | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 35 happened | conj |
| 41 | about | about | ADP | _ | 42 it | case |
| 42 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 40 feels | obl |
| 43 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 13 said | punct |
Pragmatics
- form
- statement
- act
- assert
- voice
- narrator
- polarity
- none
- teacher
- kept the draft
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | die in a quote | past | word | the same fact not said here | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | say speech: assert | can · passive | the same fact | fashioned words or a joke | formally, kindly property | vn pronounce-29.3.1 «NP V NP PP.manner»: subject=Theme in word=Manner | |||
| 3 | hear | present | a clever listener | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V PP.stimulus»: agent=Experiencer | |||||
| 4 | happen | past | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||||
| 5 | feel | present | the speaker | about joke | vn hunt-35.1 «NP V PP.theme PP.location»: agent=Agent about it=Location |
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:3.
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. 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/3/