---
title: It is a sign of common parents.' — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It is a sign of common parents.' Who acts: duckling. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 9, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 9, sentence 7

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It is a sign of common parents.'

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**Who acts:** duckling · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** sign

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (duckling), 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:pg3027:9:7
# text = It is a sign of common parents.'
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	sign	sign	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	common	common	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	parents	parent	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | duckling | a sign |  |  |  | of common parents | 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 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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