---
title: ‘It makes a great difference in one’s ideas to be dying of hunger an… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘It makes a great difference in one’s ideas to be dying of hunger and thirst on a desert island.’ Who acts: light. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Princess Mayblossom, part 2, 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/pg540/4/89/)

<!-- 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 Red Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/) / [The Princess Mayblossom, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/4/) / 89

# The Red Fairy Book, The Princess Mayblossom, part 2, sentence 89

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘It makes a great difference in one’s ideas to be dying of hunger and thirst on a desert island.’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** light · **What happens:** make, die · **To what, where:** great difference, one ideas

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Princess Mayblossom, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (light), 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:pg540:4:89
# text = ‘It makes a great difference in one’s ideas to be dying of hunger and thirst on a desert island.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	makes	make	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	difference	difference	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
7	in	in	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	10	nummod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’s	's	PART	POS	_	8	case	_	_
10	ideas	idea	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
12	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	aux	_	_
13	dying	die	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	advcl	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	hunger	hunger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	thirst	thirst	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	conj	_	_
18	on	on	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
20	desert	desert	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	compound	_	_
21	island	island	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **make** | present | light | a great difference |  | one ideas |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.material V NP»: agent=Material difference=Product |
| 2 | **die** | to-infinitive · progressive | light *not said here* |  |  |  |  | of hunger and thirst on a desert island | vn die-42.4-1 «NP V PP.cause»: agent=Patient of hunger=Causer |

<!-- .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 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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 88](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/4/88/)
- next →: [sentence 90](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/4/90/)
- ↑ back to [The Princess Mayblossom, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/4/)