---
title: "A long illness" in a death notice usually means cancer or another s… — Soft words for hard things: illness, disability… · tree and pragmatics
description: "A long illness" in a death notice usually means cancer or another slow disease that killed the person. Who acts: long illness, slow disease. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: illness, disability and the body» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency 
---

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# Soft words for hard things: illness, disability and the body, sentence 5

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"A long illness" in a death notice usually means cancer or another slow disease that killed the person.

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**Who acts:** long illness, slow disease · **What happens:** mean, kill · **To what, where:** cancer, person

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: illness, disability 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 (long illness, slow disease), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:004-illness-disability-and-babies.lesson:5
# text = "A long illness" in a death notice usually means cancer or another slow disease that killed the person.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 004-illness-disability-and-babies.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	``	_	4	punct	_	_
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	illness	illness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
9	notice	notice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	_
10	usually	usually	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	cancer	cancer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
13	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
14	another	another	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	16	det	_	_
15	slow	slow	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	disease	disease	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	conj	_	_
17	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	18	nsubj	_	_
18	killed	kill	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	acl:relcl	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	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 | a long illness in a death notice | cancer or another slow disease |  |  |  | usually *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent cancer=Topic |
| 2 | **kill** | past | another slow disease | the person |  |  |  |  | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent person=Theme |

<!-- .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:004-illness-disability-and-babies.lesson:5`.

**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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