---
title: "My own little Proserpina," he used to say. " — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "My own little Proserpina," he used to say. " Who acts: Pluto. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 4, sentence 64

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"My own little Proserpina," he used to say. "

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**Who acts:** Pluto · **What happens:** use, say · **To what, where:** own little Proserpina · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Pluto), 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:pg976:23:64
# text = "My own little Proserpina," he used to say. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	My	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
3	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
4	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	Proserpina	Proserpina	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	used	use	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **use** | past | Pluto | My own little Proserpina *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent proserpina=Theme clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | Pluto *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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:** «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Project Gutenberg book 976 (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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