---
title: But if the weather were stormy we might say twelve. — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But if the weather were stormy we might say twelve. Who acts: weather, we. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 5, 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/pg2435/5/30/)

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 5, sentence 30

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But if the weather were stormy we might say twelve.

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**Who acts:** weather, we · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** twelve · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, 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 (weather, we), 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:pg2435:5:30
# text = But if the weather were stormy we might say twelve.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	weather	weather	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
5	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	stormy	stormy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
7	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	might	might	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	parataxis	_	_
10	twelve	twelve	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the weather |  |  |  |  | stormy *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | might | we | twelve |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent twelve=Topic |

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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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