---
title: “My wife,” he said, “has been stronger than my fate.” — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “My wife,” he said, “has been stronger than my fate.” Who acts: wife, my. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 26, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 26, sentence 43

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“My wife,” he said, “has been stronger than my fate.”

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**Who acts:** wife, my · **What happens:** say, be, fate · **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 26. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wife, my), 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:pg3282:26:43
# text = “My wife,” he said, “has been stronger than my fate.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	My	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	has	have	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
11	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	12	cop	_	_
12	stronger	strong	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	7	parataxis	_	_
13	than	than	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	fate	fate	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | My wife |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **is** *in a quote* | present · perfect |  |  |  |  |  | than my fate; strong *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **fate** *in a quote* |  | my |  |  |  |  |  | nom fate «event transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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