---
title: “Fortune is so capricious, you can never count on her. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Fortune is so capricious, you can never count on her. Who acts: Fortune, you. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 21, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 21, sentence 121

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“Fortune is so capricious, you can never count on her.

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**Who acts:** Fortune, you · **What happens:** be, not count

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 21. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Fortune, you), 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:pg3282:21:121
# text = “Fortune is so capricious, you can never count on her.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Fortune	fortune	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	so	so	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	capricious	capricious	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
8	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
9	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
10	count	count	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	parataxis	_	_
11	on	on	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	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 | Fortune |  |  |  |  | capricious *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **count** *in a quote* | can | you |  |  |  |  | on Last | vn rely-70 «NP V PP.theme S\_ING»: agent=Agent on she=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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