---
title: “It would be a hard choice,” thought the king as he rode home. — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “It would be a hard choice,” thought the king as he rode home. Who acts: Happiness, hard choice, choice. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 35, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2435/35/72/)

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 35, sentence 72

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“It would be a hard choice,” thought the king as he rode home.

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**Who acts:** Happiness, hard choice, choice · **What happens:** be, think, ride · **To what, where:** hard choice, king · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 35. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Happiness, hard choice, choice), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2435:35:72
# text = “It would be a hard choice,” thought the king as he rode home.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
3	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	cop	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	choice	choice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
14	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	rode	ride	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	ccomp	_	_
16	home	home	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | would | Happiness | a hard choice |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* | past | a hard choice | the king |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V NP ADJ»: agent=Agent king=Attribute clause=Theme |
| 3 | **ride** | past | choice |  |  |  |  | home *property* | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2 «NP.agent V»: agent=Agent |

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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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**Text:** «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 2435 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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