---
title: “What a pity that a handsome young man should throw away his life so… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “What a pity that a handsome young man should throw away his life so carelessly! Who acts: handsome young man. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks, sentence 152

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“What a pity that a handsome young man should throw away his life so carelessly!

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**Who acts:** handsome young man · **What happens:** throw away · **To what, where:** pity

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (handsome young man), 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:pg503:28:152
# text = “What a pity that a handsome young man should throw away his life so carelessly!
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	nsubj	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	pity	pity	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	11	obj	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
7	handsome	handsome	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
8	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
10	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	throw	throw	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	acl:relcl	_	_
12	away	away	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
13	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
15	so	so	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
16	carelessly	carelessly	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **throw away** *in a quote* | should | a handsome young man | a pity |  |  |  | away, carelessly *property* | vn throw-17.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent that=Destination life=Theme |

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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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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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