---
title: Alas for you! why were you not a boy!” — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Alas for you! why were you not a boy!” Who acts: Alas. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 15, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/15/122/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Brown Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/) / [The Brown Fairy Book, part 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/15/) / 122

# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 15, sentence 122

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Alas for you! why were you not a boy!”

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Alas · **What happens:** not be · **To what, where:** boy

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 15. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Alas), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg3282:15:122
# text = Alas for you! why were you not a boy!”
1	Alas	ala	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
2	for	for	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	1	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
5	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	1	advmod	_	_
6	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
8	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is a** | past | Alas for you | a boy |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 121](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/15/121/)
- next →: [sentence 123](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/15/123/)
- ↑ back to [The Brown Fairy Book, part 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/15/)