---
title: "Breathed his last" means died; it is old-fashioned and solemn. — Soft words for hard things: death and dying · tree and pragmatics
description: "Breathed his last" means died; it is old-fashioned and solemn. Who acts: maker. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: death and dying» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Soft words for hard things: death and dying, sentence 21

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"Breathed his last" means died; it is old-fashioned and solemn.

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**Who acts:** maker · **What happens:** breathe, mean, die, be · **To what, where:** last · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (maker), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:001-death-polite-and-joking.lesson:21
# text = "Breathed his last" means died; it is old-fashioned and solemn.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 001-death-polite-and-joking.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): no change
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	_
2	Breathed	breathe	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	csubj	_	_
3	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	obj	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
6	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	died	die	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	6	ccomp	_	_
8	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
11	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	11	punct	_	_
13	fashioned	fashioned	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	parataxis	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	solemn	solemn	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	conj	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **breathe** *in a quote* | past |  | phrase's last |  |  |  |  | vn breathe-40.1.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent last=Theme |
| 2 | **mean** | present |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **die** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 4 | **is** | present | maker |  |  |  |  | fashioned *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **be** |  | maker *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/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:21`.

**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): no change. **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](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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- ← previous: [Soft words for hard things: death and…, 20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/1-death-polite-and-joking/20/)
- next →: [Soft words for hard things: death and…, 22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/1-death-polite-and-joking/22/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/1-death-polite-and-joking/)