---
title: "Fallen on hard times" means someone has become poor after being bet… — Soft words for hard things: money and poverty · tree and pragmatics
description: "Fallen on hard times" means someone has become poor after being better off. Who acts: someone. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: money and poverty» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/19-money-and-poverty/4/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Euphemisms](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/) / [Soft words for hard things: money and…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/19-money-and-poverty/) / 4

# Soft words for hard things: money and poverty, sentence 4

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Fallen on hard times" means someone has become poor after being better off.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** someone · **What happens:** fall, mean, become, be · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: money and poverty» 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 (someone), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:019-money-and-poverty.lesson:4
# text = "Fallen on hard times" means someone has become poor after being better off.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 019-money-and-poverty.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	Fallen	fall	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	7	csubj	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=7:nsubj
3	on	on	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	_
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
7	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	someone	someone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	10	nsubj	_	_
9	has	have	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	become	become	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	7	ccomp	_	_
11	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	xcomp	_	_
12	after	after	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
13	being	be	AUX	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	14	cop	_	_
14	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	10	advcl	_	_
15	off	off	ADP	RP	_	14	compound:prt	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fall** *in a quote* | participle |  |  |  |  | time |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **mean** | present |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **become** | present · perfect | someone |  |  |  |  | poor *property* | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient |
| 4 | **is** | gerund | someone *not said here* |  |  |  |  | good *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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:019-money-and-poverty.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): 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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Soft words for hard things: money and…, 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/19-money-and-poverty/3/)
- next →: [Soft words for hard things: money and…, 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/19-money-and-poverty/5/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/19-money-and-poverty/)