--- title: "Dropped the ball" (mostly US) means made a mistake or failed to do… — Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes · tree and pragmatics description: "Dropped the ball" (mostly US) means made a mistake or failed to do what was needed. 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. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/34-failure-and-mistakes/4/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Euphemisms](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/) / [Soft words for hard things: failure an…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/34-failure-and-mistakes/) / 4 # Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes, sentence 4 "Dropped the ball" (mostly US) means made a mistake or failed to do what was needed. **What happens:** drop, mean, make, fail, not do, need · **To what, where:** ball, mistake · **Speech:** someone speaks here 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: what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree. ## The tree {#tree} ```conllu # sent_id = school:euphemisms:034-failure-and-mistakes.lesson:4 # text = "Dropped the ball" (mostly US) means made a mistake or failed to do what was needed. # source = school lesson (ours) # course = euphemisms # lesson = 034-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 ×1, R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1 1 " " PUNCT `` _ 2 punct _ _ 2 Dropped drop VERB VBD Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin 10 csubj _ Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=10:nsubj 3 the the DET DT Definite=Def|PronType=Art 4 det _ _ 4 ball ball NOUN NN Number=Sing 2 obj _ _ 5 " " PUNCT '' _ 2 punct _ _ 6 ( ( PUNCT -LRB- _ 8 punct _ Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=10:punct 7 mostly mostly ADV RB _ 8 advmod _ Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=10:advmod 8 US US PROPN NNP Number=Sing 2 dep _ _ 9 ) ) PUNCT -RRB- _ 8 punct _ _ 10 means mean VERB VBZ Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin 0 root _ _ 11 made make VERB VBD Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin 10 ccomp _ _ 12 a a DET DT Definite=Ind|PronType=Art 13 det _ _ 13 mistake mistake NOUN NN Number=Sing 11 obj _ _ 14 or or CCONJ CC _ 15 cc _ _ 15 failed fail VERB VBD Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin 11 conj _ _ 16 to to PART TO _ 17 mark _ _ 17 do do VERB VB VerbForm=Inf 15 xcomp _ _ 18 what what PRON WP PronType=Int 20 obj _ _ 19 was be AUX VBD Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin 20 aux:pass _ _ 20 needed need VERB VBN Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass 17 advcl _ _ 21 . . PUNCT . _ 10 punct _ _ ``` ## Pragmatics {#pragmatics} No stored speech act for this sentence. | # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | **drop** *in a quote* | past | | the ball | | | | | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ball=Theme | | 2 | **mean** | present | | | | | | | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | | 3 | **make** | past | | a mistake | | | | | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset mistake=Product | | 4 | **fail** | past | | | | | | | vn succeed-74-3-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | | 5 | **not** **do** | to-infinitive | | | | | | | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | | 6 | **need** | past · passive | | | | | | | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: what=Theme | 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. **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:034-failure-and-mistakes.lesson:4`. **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 ×1, R6-punct-agree ×1, 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/). - ← previous: [Soft words for hard things: failure an…, 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/34-failure-and-mistakes/3/) - next →: [Soft words for hard things: failure an…, 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/34-failure-and-mistakes/5/) - ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/34-failure-and-mistakes/)