---
title: “Well, perhaps it is very difficult to change into a lion. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Well, perhaps it is very difficult to change into a lion. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 19, 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/pg3282/19/23/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 19, sentence 23

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“Well, perhaps it is very difficult to change into a lion.

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**What happens:** be, change · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 19. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg3282:19:23
# text = “Well, perhaps it is very difficult to change into a lion.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Well	well	INTJ	UH	_	8	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	perhaps	perhaps	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	expl	_	_
6	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
7	very	very	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	difficult	difficult	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	change	change	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	csubj	_	_
11	into	into	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	lion	lion	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | present |  |  |  |  |  | difficult, perhaps *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **change** *in a quote* | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | into a lion *result* | vn turn-26.6.1-1 «NP.patient V PP.result»: agent=Patient into lion=Result |

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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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