---
title: It was sweet to taste, but afterwards was as bitter as gall. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It was sweet to taste, but afterwards was as bitter as gall. Who acts: It. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 6, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 6, sentence 84

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It was sweet to taste, but afterwards was as bitter as gall.

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**Who acts:** It · **What happens:** be, taste

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (It), 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:pg5615:6:84
# text = It was sweet to taste, but afterwards was as bitter as gall.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	sweet	sweet	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	taste	taste	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
8	afterwards	afterwards	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
10	as	as	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	bitter	bitter	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	_
12	as	as	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	gall	gall	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | It |  |  |  |  | sweet *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **taste** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 3 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | as gall; afterwards, bitter *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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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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