---
title: _ Better to shave the heart than to shave the head. — In Ghostly Japan · tree and pragmatics
description: _ Better to shave the heart than to shave the head. A sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Morning Awakening After a Night’s Rest in a Temple, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# In Ghostly Japan, Morning Awakening After a Night’s Rest in a Temple, part 1, sentence 28

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\_ Better to shave the heart than to shave the head.

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**What happens:** shave · **To what, where:** heart, head

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This is a sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Morning Awakening After a Night’s Rest in a Temple, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg8128:24:29
# text = _ Better to shave the heart than to shave the head.
1	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	2	punct	_	_
2	Better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	shave	shave	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	csubj	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	heart	heart	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	shave	shave	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	advcl	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **shave** | to-infinitive |  | the heart |  |  |  |  | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent heart=Patient |
| 2 | **shave** | to-infinitive |  | the head |  |  |  |  | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=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:** «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Project Gutenberg book 8128 (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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