---
title: But the little child lay as white and still as if she had been dead. — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the little child lay as white and still as if she had been dead. Who acts: little child, child. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 38, 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/pg2435/38/21/)

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 38, sentence 21

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But the little child lay as white and still as if she had been dead.

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**Who acts:** little child, child · **What happens:** lay, be

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 38. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (little child, child), 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:pg2435:38:21
# text = But the little child lay as white and still as if she had been dead.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	lay	lay	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	as	as	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	obl	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
9	still	still	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
10	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
11	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
12	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
13	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
14	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	15	cop	_	_
15	dead	dead	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lay** | present | the little child |  |  |  |  | as white | vn create-26.4 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Agent as white=Attribute |
| 2 | **is** *a condition, not said to happen* | past · perfect | child |  |  |  | still | dead *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 Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 2435 (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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