---
title: "The ultimate penalty" means the death penalty: the law kills (execu… — Soft words for hard things: crime, prison and th… · tree and pragmatics
description: "The ultimate penalty" means the death penalty: the law kills (executes) the criminal. Who acts: ultimate penalty, law. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: crime, prison and the police and lying and honesty» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree
---

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# Soft words for hard things: crime, prison and the police and lying and honesty, sentence 11

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"The ultimate penalty" means the death penalty: the law kills (executes) the criminal.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** ultimate penalty, law · **What happens:** mean, kill, execute · **To what, where:** death penalty, criminal

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: crime, prison and the police and lying and honesty» 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 (ultimate penalty, law), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:028-stealing-and-lying.lesson:11
# text = "The ultimate penalty" means the death penalty: the law kills (executes) the criminal.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 028-stealing-and-lying.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	``	_	6	punct	_	_
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	ultimate	ultimate	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	penalty	penalty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
6	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
9	penalty	penalty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
10	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	law	law	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	kills	kill	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	parataxis	_	_
14	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	15	punct	_	_
15	executes	execute	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	parataxis	_	_
16	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	15	punct	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	criminal	criminal	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** | present | the ultimate penalty | the death penalty |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent penalty=Topic |
| 2 | **kill** | present | the law |  |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **execute** | present |  | the criminal |  |  |  |  | vn murder-42.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent criminal=Patient |

<!-- .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.

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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:028-stealing-and-lying.lesson:11`.

**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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