---
title: “Dear me, how dull, how dreadfully dull I am. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Dear me, how dull, how dreadfully dull I am. Who acts: lion. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 29, 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/pg3282/29/2/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 29, sentence 2

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“Dear me, how dull, how dreadfully dull I am.

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**Who acts:** lion · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 29. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lion), 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:pg3282:29:2
# text = “Dear me, how dull, how dreadfully dull I am.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
6	dull	dull	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	10	advmod	_	_
9	dreadfully	dreadfully	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	dull	dull	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	conj	_	_
11	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
12	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	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 | the lion *= lion* |  |  |  |  | dreadfully, dull *property* | tree rules |

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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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