---
title: "'Twere a pity," she said, "to spoil our chances through impatience. — The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault · tree and pragmatics
description: "'Twere a pity," she said, "to spoil our chances through impatience. Who acts: Fanny, our. A sentence of «The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault» by Charles Perrault, Upon Earth"], with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg29021/14/194/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg29021/) / [Upon Earth"\]](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg29021/14/) / 194

# The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault, Upon Earth"\], sentence 194

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"'Twere a pity," she said, "to spoil our chances through impatience.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Fanny, our · **What happens:** say, spoil, chance · **To what, where:** chances, impatience · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault» by Charles Perrault, Upon Earth"\]. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Fanny, our), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg29021:14:194
# text = "'Twere a pity," she said, "to spoil our chances through impatience.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	Twere	Twere	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	compound	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	pity	pity	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	spoil	spoil	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
14	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	chances	chance	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	_
16	through	through	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	impatience	impatience	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Fanny |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **spoil** *in a quote* | to-infinitive |  | our chances |  | impatience |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **chance** *in a quote* |  | our |  |  |  |  |  | nom chance «state intransitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault» by Charles Perrault, Project Gutenberg book 29021 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 193](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg29021/14/193/)
- next →: [sentence 195](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg29021/14/195/)
- ↑ back to [Upon Earth"\]](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg29021/14/)