---
title: Not every euphemism for death is meant to be kind; some are meant to… — Soft words for hard things: death and dying · tree and pragmatics
description: Not every euphemism for death is meant to be kind; some are meant to hide or to sound tough. 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 0

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Not every euphemism for death is meant to be kind; some are meant to hide or to sound tough.

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**What happens:** mean, be, hide, sound · **To what, where:** euphemism, some

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

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:002-death-official-and-slang.lesson:0
# text = Not every euphemism for death is meant to be kind; some are meant to hide or to sound tough.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 002-death-official-and-slang.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 ×2, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	Not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	3	advmod	_	_
2	every	every	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	3	det	_	_
3	euphemism	euphemism	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj:pass	_	_
4	for	for	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
6	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux:pass	_	_
7	meant	mean	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
9	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	cop	_	_
10	kind	kind	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	xcomp	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=7:advcl
11	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	14	nsubj:pass	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=14:nsubj:pass|HaikuPos=PRON:DT:PronType=Ind
13	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux:pass	_	_
14	meant	mean	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	7	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=7:advcl
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	hide	hide	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	xcomp	_	_
17	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
18	to	to	PART	TO	_	19	mark	_	_
19	sound	sound	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	conj	_	_
20	tough	tough	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	xcomp	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	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 | **mean** | present · passive |  | every euphemism for death |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Topic |
| 2 | **is** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | kind *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **mean** | present · passive |  | some |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **hide** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn concealment-16-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **sound** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | tough *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |

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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:002-death-official-and-slang.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): R7-rel-agree ×2, R8-pos-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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- ← previous: [Soft words for hard things: death and…, 24](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/1-death-polite-and-joking/24/)
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