---
title: ‘What a hard lot yours must have been to make you hang yourself!’ sa… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What a hard lot yours must have been to make you hang yourself!’ said he. Who acts: man. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Master Thief, sentence 55

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‘What a hard lot yours must have been to make you hang yourself!’ said he.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** have, be, hang, say · **To what, where:** yourself, hard lot · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg540:9:55
# text = ‘What a hard lot yours must have been to make you hang yourself!’ said he.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	5	det:predet	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	lot	lot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl:unmarked	_	_
6	yours	your	PRON	PRP	Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	ccomp	_	_
7	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	have	have	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	6	parataxis	_	_
9	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	11	cop	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	ccomp	_	_
12	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	_
13	hang	hang	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
14	yourself	yourself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=2|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
17	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
18	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	17	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | must |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | participle |  |  |  |  |  | make *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **hang** | infinitive |  | yourself |  |  |  |  | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent yourself=Patient |
| 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | man | what hard lot |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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