---
title: Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compar… — The Happy Prince, and Other Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?” Who acts: Love. A sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 2, sentence 115

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Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?”

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**Who acts:** Love · **What happens:** be, compare · **To what, where:** heart, bird

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This is a sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Love), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg902:2:115
# text = Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?”
1	Yet	yet	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	Love	love	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
5	than	than	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	Life	Life	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
9	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	12	nsubj	_	_
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	heart	heart	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	_
16	compared	compare	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	15	acl	_	_
17	to	to	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	heart	heart	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	_
20	of	of	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | Love |  |  |  |  | than Life; good *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is a** | present |  | the heart |  |  |  | of a bird | tree rules |
| 3 | **compare** | participle |  | a bird *not said here* |  |  |  | to the heart of a man | vn amalgamate-22.2-2 «NP V ADVP-Middle»: agent=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:** «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Project Gutenberg book 902 (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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