---
title: And now food had failed them, and that was a sore lack. — Morien: A Metrical Romance Rendered into English… · tree and pragmatics
description: And now food had failed them, and that was a sore lack. Who acts: food, that. A sentence of «Morien: A Metrical Romance Rendered into English Prose from the Mediæval Dutch» by Jessie L. Weston, Opening, part 8, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Morien: A Metrical Romance Rendered into English Prose from the Mediæval Dutch, Opening, part 8, sentence 30

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And now food had failed them, and that was a sore lack.

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**Who acts:** food, that · **What happens:** fail, be · **To what, where:** wounds, sore lack

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This is a sentence of «Morien: A Metrical Romance Rendered into English Prose from the Mediæval Dutch» by Jessie L. Weston, Opening, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (food, that), 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:pg8447:8:30
# text = And now food had failed them, and that was a sore lack.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
3	food	food	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	failed	fail	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
9	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	13	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	sore	sore	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	lack	lack	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fail** | past · perfect | food | wounds *= wound* |  |  | now |  | vn succeed-74-3-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Eventuality |
| 2 | **is a** | past | that | a sore lack |  |  |  |  | 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:** «Morien: A Metrical Romance Rendered into English Prose from the Mediæval Dutch» by Jessie L. Weston, Project Gutenberg book 8447 (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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