---
title: It was too hard and cruel; a loving word had been better." — Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains · tree and pragmatics
description: It was too hard and cruel; a loving word had been better." Who acts: loving word. A sentence of «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, Legends and Tales., part 7, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains, Legends and Tales., part 7, sentence 102

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It was too hard and cruel; a loving word had been better."

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**Who acts:** loving word · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, Legends and Tales., part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (loving word), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg74323:8:102
# text = It was too hard and cruel; a loving word had been better."
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	expl	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	too	too	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	cruel	cruel	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	loving	loving	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
11	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	13	cop	_	_
13	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | hard *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **is** | past · perfect | a loving word |  |  |  |  | good *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:** «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, Project Gutenberg book 74323 (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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