---
title: “Oh, nothing is likely to happen to me,” returned the boy. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Oh, nothing is likely to happen to me,” returned the boy. Who acts: nothing. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 23, 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/pg3282/23/17/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 23, sentence 17

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“Oh, nothing is likely to happen to me,” returned the boy.

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**Who acts:** nothing · **What happens:** be, happen, return · **To what, where:** fox, boy · **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 23. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (nothing), 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:pg3282:23:17
# text = “Oh, nothing is likely to happen to me,” returned the boy.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	6	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	6	nsubj	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	likely	likely	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	ccomp	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	happen	happen	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
9	to	to	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
13	returned	return	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	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 | nothing |  |  |  |  | likely *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **happen** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | nothing *not said here* |  | the fox *= fox* |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **return** | past |  | the boy |  |  |  |  | vn send-11.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent boy=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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