---
title: To become king at the cost of a maiden’s life was too heavy a price… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: To become king at the cost of a maiden’s life was too heavy a price to pay. Who acts: life. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Prince, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Grateful Prince, part 1, sentence 31

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To become king at the cost of a maiden’s life was too heavy a price to pay.

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**Who acts:** life · **What happens:** become, be, pay · **To what, where:** king, cost

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Prince, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (life), 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:pg641:9:31
# text = To become king at the cost of a maiden’s life was too heavy a price to pay.
1	To	to	PART	TO	_	2	mark	_	_
2	become	become	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	xcomp	_	_
4	at	at	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	cost	cost	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
7	of	of	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	maiden	maiden	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’s	's	PART	POS	_	9	case	_	_
11	life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
12	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
13	too	too	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
14	heavy	heavy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	price	price	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
17	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	mark	_	_
18	pay	pay	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **become** | to-infinitive |  | king |  | the cost  a heavy price |  |  | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **is** | past | a maiden's life |  |  |  |  | heavy *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **pay** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn pay-68-1 «NP V NP»: 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 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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