---
title: A wife cannot always charm, and though YOU will never alter, the bea… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: A wife cannot always charm, and though YOU will never alter, the beauty of mortals is as a flower that fades. Who acts: YOU, beauty, flower. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 32, 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/pg3282/32/37/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 32, sentence 37

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A wife cannot always charm, and though YOU will never alter, the beauty of mortals is as a flower that fades.

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**Who acts:** YOU, beauty, flower · **What happens:** not alter, be, fade

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 32. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (YOU, beauty, flower), 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:pg3282:32:37
# text = A wife cannot always charm, and though YOU will never alter, the beauty of mortals is as a flower that fades.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
5	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	6	advmod	_	_
6	charm	charm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
9	though	though	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
10	YOU	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	alter	alter	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	22	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	beauty	beauty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	nsubj	_	_
17	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	mortals	mortal	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nmod	_	_
19	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	22	cop	_	_
20	as	as	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	flower	flower	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	appos	_	_
23	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	24	nsubj	_	_
24	fades	fade	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	22	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **alter** | future | YOU |  |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **is** | present | the beauty of mortals |  |  |  |  | as a flower | tree rules |
| 3 | **fade** | present | a flower |  |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |

<!-- .note -->
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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