---
title: Nothing could have been more splendid than the ambassador’s attire. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Nothing could have been more splendid than the ambassador’s attire. Who acts: Nothing. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Princess Mayblossom, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Princess Mayblossom, part 1, sentence 53

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Nothing could have been more splendid than the ambassador’s attire.

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**Who acts:** Nothing · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Princess Mayblossom, 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 (Nothing), 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:pg540:3:53
# text = Nothing could have been more splendid than the ambassador’s attire.
1	Nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	6	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
3	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	aux	_	_
4	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	6	cop	_	_
5	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	6	advmod	_	_
6	splendid	splendid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
7	than	than	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	ambassador	ambassador	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’s	's	PART	POS	_	9	case	_	_
11	attire	attire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | could · perfect | Nothing |  |  |  |  | than the ambassador's attire; splendid *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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