---
title: “He is a beautiful boy, and it is a great pity; but what IS to happe… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “He is a beautiful boy, and it is a great pity; but what IS to happen WILL happen,” said they. Who acts: king, child, beautiful boy, fairies. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 24, 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/pg3282/24/117/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 24, sentence 117

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“He is a beautiful boy, and it is a great pity; but what IS to happen WILL happen,” said they.

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**Who acts:** king, child, beautiful boy, fairies · **What happens:** be, happen, say · **To what, where:** beautiful boy, great pity · **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 24. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (king, child, beautiful boy, fairies), 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:pg3282:24:117
# text = “He is a beautiful boy, and it is a great pity; but what IS to happen WILL happen,” said they.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	21	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	pity	pity	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
15	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
16	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	19	nsubj	_	_
17	IS	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
18	to	to	PART	TO	_	19	mark	_	_
19	happen	happen	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
20	WILL	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	21	aux	_	_
21	happen	happen	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	24	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	21	punct	_	_
24	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
25	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	24	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	24	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | king | a beautiful boy |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | child | a great pity |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **is** *in a quote* | present | a beautiful boy |  |  |  |  | happen *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **happen** *in a quote* | future | a beautiful boy |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | fairies *= fairy* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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