Soft words for hard things: death and dying, sentence 4

Vivid example: a general who says "the target was neutralized" means that people were killed, but the words make it sound like switching off a machine.

Who acts: general, Vivid example, words, it · What happens: say, neutralize, mean, kill, make, sound · To what, where: target, people, machine · 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 (general, Vivid example, words, it), 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	Vivid	vivid	ADJ	Degree=Pos	2 example	amod
2	example	example	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 means	nsubj
3	:	:	PUNCT	_	14 means	punct
4	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	5 general	det
5	general	general	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 example	appos
6	who	who	PRON	PronType=Rel	7 says	nsubj
7	says	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	5 general	acl:relcl
8	"	"	PUNCT	_	12 neutralized	punct
9	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	10 target	det
10	target	target	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 neutralized	nsubj:pass
11	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	12 neutralized	aux:pass
12	neutralized	neutralize	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	7 says	ccomp
13	"	"	PUNCT	_	12 neutralized	punct
14	means	mean	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
15	that	that	SCONJ	_	18 killed	mark
16	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	18 killed	nsubj
17	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	18 killed	aux:pass
18	killed	kill	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	14 means	ccomp
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	23 make	punct
20	but	but	CCONJ	_	23 make	cc
21	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	22 words	det
22	words	word	NOUN	Number=Plur	23 make	nsubj
23	make	make	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	14 means	conj
24	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	25 sound	nsubj
25	sound	sound	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	23 make	xcomp
26	like	like	SCONJ	_	27 switching	mark
27	switching	switch	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	25 sound	advcl
28	off	off	ADP	_	27 switching	compound:prt
29	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	30 machine	det
30	machine	machine	NOUN	Number=Sing	27 switching	obj
31	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 example	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	say speech: assert	present	a general		vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
2	neutralize in a quote	past · passive		the target	vn other_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: subject=Patient
3	mean	present	Vivid example		vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
4	kill	past · passive		people	vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme
5	make	present	the words		tree rules
6	sound	infinitive	it		vn stimulus_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus
7	switch off	gerund		a machine	vn convert-26.6.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent machine=Patient

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:002-death-official-and-slang.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): 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/2-death-official-and-slang/4/