---
title: His ambition was to perform other and more heroic deeds, which shoul… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: His ambition was to perform other and more heroic deeds, which should be better worth telling in prose and verse. Who acts: ambition, other deeds, Theseus. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Minotaur., part 2, sentence 76

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His ambition was to perform other and more heroic deeds, which should be better worth telling in prose and verse.

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**Who acts:** ambition, other deeds, Theseus · **What happens:** be, tell, ambition · **To what, where:** prose · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., 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 (ambition, other deeds, Theseus), 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:pg976:4:76
# text = His ambition was to perform other and more heroic deeds, which should be better worth telling in prose and verse.
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	ambition	ambition	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	perform	perform	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	9	advmod	_	_
9	heroic	heroic	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	conj	_	_
10	deeds	deed	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
12	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	15	nsubj	_	_
13	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
14	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	cop	_	_
15	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	10	parataxis	_	_
16	worth	worth	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	conj	_	_
17	telling	tell	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	16	ccomp	_	_
18	in	in	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	prose	prose	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
21	verse	verse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | Theseus's ambition |  |  |  |  | perform *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | should | other deeds |  |  |  |  | good *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **be** |  | other deeds *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **tell** *speech: assert* | gerund | other deeds *not said here* |  |  | prose and verse |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **ambition** |  | Theseus |  |  |  |  |  | nom ambition «feeling intransitive»: poss=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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