---
title: My most ardent desire would be to die and become a butterfly so that… — Winning Buddha's smile · tree and pragmatics
description: My most ardent desire would be to die and become a butterfly so that I could hover about this adorable flower.” Who acts: ardent desire, I, My. A sentence of «Winning Buddha's smile», Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78208/6/143/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Winning Buddha's smile](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78208/) / [Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78208/6/) / 143

# Winning Buddha's smile, Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 4, sentence 143

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
My most ardent desire would be to die and become a butterfly so that I could hover about this adorable flower.”

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** ardent desire, I, My · **What happens:** be, become, hover, desire · **To what, where:** butterfly

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Winning Buddha's smile», Winning Buddha’s Smile, 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 (ardent desire, I, My), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg78208:6:145
# text = My most ardent desire would be to die and become a butterfly so that I could hover about this adorable flower.”
1	My	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
2	most	most	ADV	RBS	Degree=Sup	3	advmod	_	_
3	ardent	ardent	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	desire	desire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
5	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
6	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	cop	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	die	die	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	become	become	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	conj	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	butterfly	butterfly	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	xcomp	_	_
13	so	so	SCONJ	IN	ExtPos=SCONJ	17	mark	_	_
14	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	13	fixed	_	_
15	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
16	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
17	hover	hover	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	advcl	_	_
18	about	about	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
19	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	21	det	_	_
20	adorable	adorable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	flower	flower	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | would | My ardent desire |  |  |  |  | die *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **become** | infinitive | My ardent desire *not said here* | a butterfly |  |  |  |  | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **hover** | could | I |  |  |  |  | about this adorable flower | vn modes\_of\_being\_with\_motion-47.3 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme about flower=Location |
| 4 | **desire** |  | My |  |  |  |  |  | nom desire «feeling transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «Winning Buddha's smile», Project Gutenberg book 78208 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 142](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78208/6/142/)
- next →: [sentence 144](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78208/6/144/)
- ↑ back to [Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78208/6/)