---
title: But, alas! the joy of liberty lasted but a short time. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But, alas! the joy of liberty lasted but a short time. Who acts: joy. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Beasts(11), part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Grateful Beasts(11), part 4, sentence 52

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But, alas! the joy of liberty lasted but a short time.

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**Who acts:** joy · **What happens:** last, joy · **To what, where:** liberty

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Beasts(11), part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (joy), 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:pg640:17:52
# text = But, alas! the joy of liberty lasted but a short time.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
3	alas	alas	INTJ	UH	_	6	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	joy	joy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	liberty	liberty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
9	lasted	last	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	short	short	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **last** | past | the joy of liberty |  |  |  | time |  | vn cost-54.2 «NP V NP.value»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **joy** |  |  | liberty |  |  |  |  | nom joy «feeling transitive»: of=patient |

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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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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