Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes, sentence 0

Nobody likes to say "we failed" or "I made a mistake", so people reach for softer words: a company whose new phone caught fire may call it "a hiccup", which makes a big failure sound as small as a hiccup.

Who acts: Nobody, we, I, people, new phone, company · What happens: like, say, fail, make, reach, catch · To what, where: mistake, fire, failure sound · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes» 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 (Nobody, we, I, people), 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	Nobody	nobody	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Neg	2 likes	nsubj
2	likes	like	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	to	to	PART	_	4 say	mark
4	say	say	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 likes	xcomp
5	"	"	PUNCT	_	7 failed	punct
6	we	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	7 failed	nsubj
7	failed	fail	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 say	ccomp
8	"	"	PUNCT	_	7 failed	punct
9	or	or	CCONJ	_	12 made	cc
10	"	"	PUNCT	_	12 made	punct
11	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	12 made	nsubj
12	made	make	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 failed	conj
13	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	14 mistake	det
14	mistake	mistake	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 made	obj
15	"	"	PUNCT	_	12 made	punct
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	19 reach	punct
17	so	so	ADV	_	19 reach	advmod
18	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	19 reach	nsubj
19	reach	reach	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	12 made	conj
20	for	for	ADP	_	22 words	case
21	softer	soft	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	22 words	amod
22	words	word	NOUN	Number=Plur	19 reach	obl
23	:	:	PUNCT	_	32 call	punct
24	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	25 company	det
25	company	company	NOUN	Number=Sing	32 call	nsubj
26	whose	whose	PRON	Poss=Yes PronType=Rel	28 phone	nmod:poss
27	new	new	ADJ	Degree=Pos	28 phone	amod
28	phone	phone	NOUN	Number=Sing	29 caught	nsubj
29	caught	catch	VERB	Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	25 company	acl:relcl
30	fire	fire	NOUN	Number=Sing	29 caught	obj
31	may	may	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	32 call	aux
32	call	call	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 likes	parataxis
33	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	32 call	obj
34	"	"	PUNCT	_	36 hiccup	punct
35	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	36 hiccup	det
36	hiccup	hiccup	NOUN	Number=Sing	32 call	xcomp
37	"	"	PUNCT	_	36 hiccup	punct
38	,	,	PUNCT	_	40 makes	punct
39	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	40 makes	nsubj
40	makes	make	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	2 likes	conj
41	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	43 failure	det
42	big	big	ADJ	Degree=Pos	43 failure	amod
43	failure	failure	NOUN	Number=Sing	44 sound	compound
44	sound	sound	NOUN	Number=Sing	40 makes	obj
45	as	as	ADV	_	46 small	advmod
46	small	small	ADJ	Degree=Pos	44 sound	xcomp
47	as	as	ADP	_	49 hiccup	case
48	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	49 hiccup	det
49	hiccup	hiccup	NOUN	Number=Sing	46 small	obl
50	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 likes	punct

Pragmatics

form: statement
act: assert
voice: narrator
polarity: pos
teacher: changed voice=narrator

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	like	present	Nobody			vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme
2	say speech: assert not said to happen	to-infinitive	Nobody not said here			vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
3	fail in a quote	past	we			vn succeed-74-3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
4	make in a quote	past	I	a mistake		vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent mistake=Product
5	reach	present	people		for softer words	vn body_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
6	catch	past	new phone	fire		vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fire=Theme
7	call	may	a company	fire		vn initiate_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent it=Recipient
8	make	present		failure sound		vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset sound=Product

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:033-failure-and-mistakes.lesson:0.

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 ×3, R6-punct-agree ×2, R7-rel-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/33-failure-and-mistakes/0/