---
title: "A setback" means a failure, made to sound like a small step back. — Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes · tree and pragmatics
description: "A setback" means a failure, made to sound like a small step back. Who acts: setback, failure. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: 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: failure and mistakes, sentence 6

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"A setback" means a failure, made to sound like a small step back.

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**Who acts:** setback, failure · **What happens:** mean, make, sound · **To what, where:** failure

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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 (setback, failure), 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:6
# text = "A setback" means a failure, made to sound like a small step back.
# 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): no change
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	_
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	setback	setback	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
5	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	failure	failure	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	made	make	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	7	acl	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	sound	sound	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	_
12	like	like	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	step	step	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
16	back	back	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed act=assert

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** | present | a setback | a failure |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent failure=Topic |
| 2 | **make** | participle |  | a failure *not said here* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **sound** | to-infinitive | a failure *not said here* |  |  |  |  | like a small step | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: 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:033-failure-and-mistakes.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): 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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