---
title: I could rub your shell for you till it was bright and shining again. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: I could rub your shell for you till it was bright and shining again. Who acts: I, shell. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 12, 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/pg3282/12/60/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 12, sentence 60

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I could rub your shell for you till it was bright and shining again.

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**Who acts:** I, shell · **What happens:** rub, be, shine · **To what, where:** shell

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, shell), 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:pg3282:12:60
# text = I could rub your shell for you till it was bright and shining again.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	rub	rub	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	shell	shell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	for	for	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	obl	_	_
8	till	till	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
11	bright	bright	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	advcl	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	shining	shine	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	11	conj	_	_
14	again	again	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **rub** | could | I | your shell |  |  |  | for you | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent shell=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | past | shell |  |  |  |  | bright *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **shine** | gerund | shell *not said here* |  |  |  | again |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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 Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (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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