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

Saying "no" or "you got it wrong" can hurt, so people dress failure up in softer clothes: a letter that says "we've decided to go in a different direction" really means "you did not get the job".

Who acts: you, Saying, people, letter, we · What happens: say, get, hurt, dress up, decide, go · To what, where: it, failure, softer clothes, different direction, job · 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 (you, Saying, people, letter), 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	Saying	say	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	13 hurt	csubj
2	"	"	PUNCT	_	3 no	punct
3	no	no	INTJ	Polarity=Neg	1 Saying	discourse
4	"	"	PUNCT	_	3 no	punct
5	or	or	CCONJ	_	8 got	cc
6	"	"	PUNCT	_	8 got	punct
7	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	8 got	nsubj
8	got	get	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	1 Saying	ccomp
9	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	8 got	obj
10	wrong	wrong	ADJ	Degree=Pos	8 got	xcomp
11	"	"	PUNCT	_	8 got	punct
12	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	13 hurt	aux
13	hurt	hurt	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 dress	punct
15	so	so	ADV	_	17 dress	advmod
16	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	17 dress	nsubj
17	dress	dress	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	13 hurt	conj
18	failure	failure	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 dress	obj
19	up	up	ADP	_	17 dress	compound:prt
20	in	in	ADP	_	22 clothes	case
21	softer	soft	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	22 clothes	amod
22	clothes	clothes	NOUN	Number=Ptan	17 dress	obl
23	:	:	PUNCT	_	25 letter	punct
24	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	25 letter	det
25	letter	letter	NOUN	Number=Sing	40 means	nsubj
26	that	that	PRON	PronType=Rel	27 says	nsubj
27	says	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	25 letter	acl:relcl
28	"	"	PUNCT	_	31 decided	punct
29	we	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	31 decided	nsubj
30	've	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	31 decided	aux
31	decided	decide	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	27 says	ccomp
32	to	to	PART	_	33 go	mark
33	go	go	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	31 decided	xcomp
34	in	in	ADP	_	37 direction	case
35	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	37 direction	det
36	different	different	ADJ	Degree=Pos	37 direction	amod
37	direction	direction	NOUN	Number=Sing	33 go	obl
38	"	"	PUNCT	_	31 decided	punct
39	really	really	ADV	_	40 means	advmod
40	means	mean	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	17 dress	parataxis
41	"	"	PUNCT	_	45 get	punct
42	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	45 get	nsubj
43	did	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	45 get	aux
44	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	45 get	advmod
45	get	get	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	40 means	ccomp
46	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	47 job	det
47	job	job	NOUN	Number=Sing	45 get	obj
48	"	"	PUNCT	_	45 get	punct
49	.	.	PUNCT	_	13 hurt	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	say speech: assert	gerund					vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
2	get in a quote	past	you	it		wrong property	vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer it=Stimulus
3	hurt	can	Saying				vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer
4	dress up	present	people	failure	softer clothes		vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent failure=Patient
5	say speech: assert	present	a letter				vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
6	decide in a quote	present · perfect	we				vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V what S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
7	go not said to happen, in a quote	to-infinitive	we not said here		a different direction		vn occur-48.3-2 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme in direction=Location
8	mean	present	a letter				vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
9	not get in a quote	past · do-support	you	the job			vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer job=Stimulus

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:034-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 ×1, R6-punct-agree ×3. 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/34-failure-and-mistakes/0/