---
title: "The big sleep" means death; it is a humorous, tough-sounding phrase… — Soft words for hard things: death and dying, ill… · tree and pragmatics
description: "The big sleep" means death; it is a humorous, tough-sounding phrase from crime stories. Who acts: big sleep, sleep. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: death and dying, illness and the body» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmat
---

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# Soft words for hard things: death and dying, illness and the body, sentence 7

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"The big sleep" means death; it is a humorous, tough-sounding phrase from crime stories.

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**Who acts:** big sleep, sleep · **What happens:** mean, sound, be · **To what, where:** death, humorous tough sounding phrase, crime stories

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: death and dying, illness and the body» 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 (big sleep, sleep), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:003-death-and-feeling-poorly.lesson:7
# text = "The big sleep" means death; it is a humorous, tough-sounding phrase from crime stories.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 003-death-and-feeling-poorly.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	``	_	4	punct	_	_
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	sleep	sleep	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	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
8	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
12	humorous	humorous	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
14	tough	tough	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
15	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	14	punct	_	_
16	sounding	sound	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	17	amod	_	_
17	phrase	phrase	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=6:conj
18	from	from	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	crime	crime	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	compound	_	_
20	stories	story	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	nmod	_	_
21	.	.	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 big sleep | death |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent death=Topic |
| 2 | **sound** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 3 | **is a** | present | sleep | a humorous tough sounding phrase |  | crime stories |  |  | 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.

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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:003-death-and-feeling-poorly.lesson:7`.

**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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