---
title: A lovely Princess like you must surely prefer to die rather than be… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: A lovely Princess like you must surely prefer to die rather than be the wife of a poor little dwarf like myself.” Who acts: lovely Princess. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Yellow Dwarf, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Yellow Dwarf, part 1, sentence 95

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A lovely Princess like you must surely prefer to die rather than be the wife of a poor little dwarf like myself.”

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**Who acts:** lovely Princess · **What happens:** prefer, die, be · **To what, where:** wife

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Yellow Dwarf, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lovely Princess), 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:pg503:5:95
# text = A lovely Princess like you must surely prefer to die rather than be the wife of a poor little dwarf like myself.”
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	lovely	lovely	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	Princess	princess	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
4	like	like	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nmod	_	_
6	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
7	surely	surely	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	prefer	prefer	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	die	die	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	xcomp	_	_
11	rather	rather	ADV	RB	ExtPos=CCONJ	15	cc	_	_
12	than	than	ADP	IN	_	11	fixed	_	_
13	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	cop	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	conj	_	_
16	of	of	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
18	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
19	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	dwarf	dwarf	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	_
21	like	like	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	myself	myself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	20	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **prefer** | must | a lovely Princess like you |  |  |  |  | surely *property* | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **die** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | a lovely Princess like you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 3 | **is a** | infinitive | a lovely Princess like you *not said here* | the wife |  |  |  | of a poor little dwarf like myself | tree rules |

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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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