---
title: "A higher power" means God, said without naming any religion. — Soft words for hard things: religion and fate an… · tree and pragmatics
description: "A higher power" means God, said without naming any religion. Who acts: higher power. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: religion and fate and failure and mistakes» 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: religion and fate and failure and mistakes, sentence 6

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"A higher power" means God, said without naming any religion.

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**Who acts:** higher power · **What happens:** mean, say, name · **To what, where:** God, religion · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: religion and fate and failure and mistakes» 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 (higher power), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:032-religion-fate-failure.lesson:6
# text = "A higher power" means God, said without naming any religion.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 032-religion-fate-failure.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): R6-punct-agree ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	_
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	higher	high	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	4	amod	_	_
4	power	power	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	God	God	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	parataxis	_	_
10	without	without	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
11	naming	name	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	9	advcl	_	_
12	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	13	det	_	_
13	religion	religion	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=6:punct
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
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 | a higher power | God |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent god=Topic |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **name** | gerund |  | any religion |  |  |  |  | vn appoint-29.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent religion=Theme |

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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:032-religion-fate-failure.lesson:6`.

**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): R6-punct-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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