---
title: Your happiness is spoilt because you have no children.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Your happiness is spoilt because you have no children.’ Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Child Who Came From an Egg, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Child Who Came From an Egg, sentence 14

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Your happiness is spoilt because you have no children.’

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** spoil, have · **To what, where:** happiness, children

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Child Who Came From an Egg. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg641:12:14
# text = Your happiness is spoilt because you have no children.’
1	Your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	happiness	happiness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj:pass	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux:pass	_	_
4	spoilt	spoil	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
5	because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
8	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	9	det	_	_
9	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **spoil** | present · passive |  | Your happiness |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** | present | you | no children |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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