---
title: To be sure, it was a very wretched-looking pomegranate, and seemed t… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: To be sure, it was a very wretched-looking pomegranate, and seemed to have no more juice in it than an oyster shell. Who acts: possession. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 5, 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/pg976/24/4/)

<!-- 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/) / [Tanglewood Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/) / [The Pomegranate Seeds., part 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/24/) / 4

# Tanglewood Tales, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 5, sentence 4

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
To be sure, it was a very wretched-looking pomegranate, and seemed to have no more juice in it than an oyster shell.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** possession · **What happens:** be, look, seem, have · **To what, where:** looking pomegranate, more juice, possession

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (possession), 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:pg976:24:4
# text = To be sure, it was a very wretched-looking pomegranate, and seemed to have no more juice in it than an oyster shell.
1	To	to	PART	TO	_	3	mark	_	_
2	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	cop	_	_
3	sure	sure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
6	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
8	very	very	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	wretched	wretched	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	looking	look	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	12	amod	_	_
12	pomegranate	pomegranate	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	xcomp	_	_
18	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	20	det	_	_
19	more	more	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	20	amod	_	_
20	juice	juice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	_
21	in	in	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nmod	_	_
23	than	than	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
24	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	26	det	_	_
25	oyster	oyster	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	compound	_	_
26	shell	shell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | sure *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **look** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 3 | **is a** | past | possession | a looking pomegranate |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **seem** | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme clause=Attribute |
| 5 | **have** | to-infinitive |  | no more juice |  | possession |  | than a oyster shell | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent juice=Patient |

<!-- .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:** «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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/24/3/)
- next →: [sentence 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/24/5/)
- ↑ back to [The Pomegranate Seeds., part 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/24/)