---
title: "Passed away" means died; it is the polite, kind word. — Soft words for hard things: death and dying · tree and pragmatics
description: "Passed away" means died; it is the polite, kind word. Who acts: teacher. 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 5

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"Passed away" means died; it is the polite, kind word.

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**Who acts:** teacher · **What happens:** pass away, mean, die, be · **To what, where:** polite kind word · **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 (teacher), 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:5
# text = "Passed away" means died; it is the polite, kind word.
# 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): R7-rel-agree ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	_
2	Passed	pass	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	csubj	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=5:nsubj|HaikuPos=VERB:VBD:Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin
3	away	away	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
4	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	died	die	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	5	conj	_	_
7	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
9	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
11	polite	polite	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
13	kind	kind	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	parataxis	_	_
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pass away** *in a quote* | participle |  |  |  |  |  | away *property* | vn die-42.4-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **mean** | present |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **die** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 4 | **is a** | present | teacher | the polite kind word |  |  |  |  | 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:5`.

**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): R7-rel-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](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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