---
title: 'Oh, nonsense, mother; what power could a creature like that have ov… — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'Oh, nonsense, mother; what power could a creature like that have over me? Who acts: nonsense, that. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 25, 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/pg3027/25/14/)

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 25, sentence 14

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'Oh, nonsense, mother; what power could a creature like that have over me?

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**Who acts:** nonsense, that · **What happens:** creature, have

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 25. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (nonsense, that), 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:pg3027:25:14
# text = 'Oh, nonsense, mother; what power could a creature like that have over me?
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	4	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	nonsense	nonsense	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	12	punct	_	_
8	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	12	nsubj	_	_
9	power	power	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
10	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	creature	creature	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	_
13	like	like	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
14	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	15	nsubj	_	_
15	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	_
16	over	over	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	obl	_	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 | **creature** | could | nonsense and mother and a creature |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** | present | that |  |  |  |  | over me | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=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:** «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (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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