---
title: Is it not possible, at the risk of one's life, to slay him?" — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Is it not possible, at the risk of one's life, to slay him?" Who acts: kind. 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 89

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Is it not possible, at the risk of one's life, to slay him?"

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**Who acts:** kind · **What happens:** not be, slay, risk · **To what, where:** risk, hand, life

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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 (kind), 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:pg976:4:89
# text = Is it not possible, at the risk of one's life, to slay him?"
1	Is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	possible	possible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	at	at	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	risk	risk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
10	one	one	PRON	PRP	Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	's	's	PART	POS	_	10	case	_	_
12	life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	slay	slay	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
16	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** | present | kind |  |  | the risk of one's life |  | possible *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **slay** | to-infinitive |  | hand |  |  |  |  | vn murder-42.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Patient |
| 3 | **risk** |  |  | one's life |  |  |  |  | nom risk «state transitive»: of=patient |

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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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