---
title: A person of my position is never useful. — The Happy Prince, and Other Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: A person of my position is never useful. Who acts: person. A sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 7, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg902/7/18/)

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# The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 7, sentence 18

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A person of my position is never useful.

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**Who acts:** person · **What happens:** not be

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This is a sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (person), 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:pg902:7:18
# text = A person of my position is never useful.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	position	position	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
6	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
7	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
8	useful	useful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** | present | a person of my position |  |  |  |  | useful *property* | 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:** «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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