---
title: It certainly was a dreadfully hard frost. — The Happy Prince, and Other Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: It certainly was a dreadfully hard frost. Who acts: fact. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg902/2/38/)

<!-- 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/) / [The Happy Prince, and Other Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg902/) / [Opening, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg902/2/) / 38

# The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 2, sentence 38

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
It certainly was a dreadfully hard frost.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** fact · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** hard frost

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (fact), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg902:2:38
# text = It certainly was a dreadfully hard frost.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
2	certainly	certainly	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
5	dreadfully	dreadfully	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	frost	frost	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | fact | a hard frost |  |  |  | certainly *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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:** «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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 37](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg902/2/37/)
- next →: [sentence 39](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg902/2/39/)
- ↑ back to [Opening, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg902/2/)