---
title: And, touching the ball, he just said: “Bear, die!” — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And, touching the ball, he just said: “Bear, die!” Who acts: bear. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 28, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 28, sentence 83

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And, touching the ball, he just said: “Bear, die!”

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**Who acts:** bear · **What happens:** touch, say, die · **To what, where:** ball · **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 28. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (bear), 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:pg3282:28:83
# text = And, touching the ball, he just said: “Bear, die!”
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
3	touching	touch	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	ccomp	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	ball	ball	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	just	just	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	12	punct	_	_
11	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	Bear	bear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
14	die	die	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **touch** | gerund |  | the ball |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme ball=Co-Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: express* | past | bear |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **die** *in a quote* | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |

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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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