---
title: ‘This is a bad business for us, gossip; your daughter ought to have… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘This is a bad business for us, gossip; your daughter ought to have been prettier.’ Who acts: This, daughter. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Princess Rosette, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, Princess Rosette, sentence 166

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‘This is a bad business for us, gossip; your daughter ought to have been prettier.’

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**Who acts:** This, daughter · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** bad business

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Princess Rosette. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (This, daughter), 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:pg540:11:166
# text = ‘This is a bad business for us, gossip; your daughter ought to have been prettier.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	This	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	bad	bad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	business	business	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
7	for	for	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	gossip	gossip	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	18	punct	_	_
12	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	daughter	daughter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
14	ought	ought	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	mark	_	_
16	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	aux	_	_
17	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	18	cop	_	_
18	prettier	pretty	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | This | a bad business and gossip |  |  |  | for us | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | ought · perfect | your daughter |  |  |  |  | pretty *property* | 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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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