---
title: That question proved hard to answer. — In Ghostly Japan · tree and pragmatics
description: That question proved hard to answer. Who acts: question. A sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Names of Incense Used., part 6, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# In Ghostly Japan, Names of Incense Used., part 6, sentence 130

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That question proved hard to answer.

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**Who acts:** question · **What happens:** prove, answer

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This is a sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Names of Incense Used., part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (question), 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:pg8128:8:131
# text = That question proved hard to answer.
1	That	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	2	det	_	_
2	question	question	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	proved	prove	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	xcomp	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	answer	answer	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **prove** | past | that question |  |  |  |  | hard *property* | vn declare-29.4-1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | that question *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: 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:** «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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