---
title: Nobody likes to say "we failed" or "I made a mistake", so people rea… — Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes · tree and pragmatics
description: Nobody likes to say "we failed" or "I made a mistake", so people reach for softer words: a company whose new phone caught fire may call it "a hiccup", which makes a big failure sound as small as a hiccup. Who acts: Nobody, we, I, people. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: failure 
---

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# Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes, sentence 0

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Nobody likes to say "we failed" or "I made a mistake", so people reach for softer words: a company whose new phone caught fire may call it "a hiccup", which makes a big failure sound as small as a hiccup.

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**Who acts:** Nobody, we, I, people, new phone, company · **What happens:** like, say, fail, make, reach, catch · **To what, where:** mistake, fire, failure sound · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: 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 (Nobody, we, I, people), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:033-failure-and-mistakes.lesson:0
# text = Nobody likes to say "we failed" or "I made a mistake", so people reach for softer words: a company whose new phone caught fire may call it "a hiccup", which makes a big failure sound as small as a hiccup.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 033-failure-and-mistakes.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): R5-strong ×3, R6-punct-agree ×2, R7-rel-agree ×2
1	Nobody	nobody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	2	nsubj	_	_
2	likes	like	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	_
6	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	failed	fail	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	_
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=12:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:``:_
9	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
10	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	_
11	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	made	make	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	mistake	mistake	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	_
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=14:punct
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
17	so	so	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
18	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	nsubj	_	_
19	reach	reach	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	conj	_	_
20	for	for	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	softer	soft	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	22	amod	_	_
22	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	obl	_	_
23	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	32	punct	_	_
24	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	25	det	_	_
25	company	company	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	32	nsubj	_	_
26	whose	whose	PRON	WP$	Poss=Yes|PronType=Rel	28	nmod:poss	_	_
27	new	new	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	28	amod	_	_
28	phone	phone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	29	nsubj	_	_
29	caught	catch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	25	acl:relcl	_	_
30	fire	fire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	29	obj	_	_
31	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	32	aux	_	_
32	call	call	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	parataxis	_	_
33	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	32	obj	_	_
34	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	36	punct	_	_
35	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	36	det	_	_
36	hiccup	hiccup	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	32	xcomp	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=32:parataxis
37	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	36	punct	_	_
38	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	40	punct	_	_
39	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	40	nsubj	_	_
40	makes	make	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
41	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	43	det	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=44:det
42	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	43	amod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=44:amod
43	failure	failure	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	44	compound	_	_
44	sound	sound	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	40	obj	_	_
45	as	as	ADV	RB	_	46	advmod	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=46:case|HaikuPos=ADP:IN:_
46	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	44	xcomp	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=40:conj
47	as	as	ADP	IN	_	49	case	_	_
48	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	49	det	_	_
49	hiccup	hiccup	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	46	obl	_	_
50	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: pos
- teacher: changed voice=narrator

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **like** | present | Nobody |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | Nobody *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **fail** *in a quote* | past | we |  |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **make** *in a quote* | past | I | a mistake |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent mistake=Product |
| 5 | **reach** | present | people |  |  |  |  | for softer words | vn body\_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 6 | **catch** | past | new phone | fire |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fire=Theme |
| 7 | **call** | may | a company | fire |  |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent it=Recipient |
| 8 | **make** | present |  | failure sound |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset sound=Product |

<!-- .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:033-failure-and-mistakes.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): R5-strong ×3, R6-punct-agree ×2, R7-rel-agree ×2. **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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