---
title: ‘Miserable wretches!’ cried the Prince; ‘but for the presence of tha… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Miserable wretches!’ cried the Prince; ‘but for the presence of that lovely portrait I would cut off your heads.’ Who acts: Miserable wretches, I. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Heart of Ice, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, Heart of Ice, part 1, sentence 49

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‘Miserable wretches!’ cried the Prince; ‘but for the presence of that lovely portrait I would cut off your heads.’

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**Who acts:** Miserable wretches, I · **What happens:** cry, cut off · **To what, where:** Prince, heads

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Heart of Ice, 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 (Miserable wretches, I), 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:pg7277:14:49
# text = ‘Miserable wretches!’ cried the Prince; ‘but for the presence of that lovely portrait I would cut off your heads.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Miserable	miserable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	wretches	wretch	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	Prince	Prince	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	6	punct	_	_
10	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	21	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
12	for	for	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	presence	presence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obl	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
16	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	18	det	_	_
17	lovely	lovely	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	portrait	portrait	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod	_	_
19	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
20	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	21	aux	_	_
21	cut	cut	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	parataxis	_	_
22	off	off	ADP	RP	_	21	compound:prt	_	_
23	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	24	nmod:poss	_	_
24	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	21	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	21	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	21	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | Miserable wretches | the Prince |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent prince=Topic |
| 2 | **cut off** | would | I | your heads |  |  |  | for the presence of that lovely portrait | vn stop-55.4-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Affector head=Eventuality |

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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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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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