---
title: ‘I want nothing but to be busy.’ — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I want nothing but to be busy.’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 11, 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/pg3454/11/58/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 11, sentence 58

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‘I want nothing but to be busy.’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** want, be · **To what, where:** nothing

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 11. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg3454:11:58
# text = ‘I want nothing but to be busy.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	want	want	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	3	obj	_	_
5	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
7	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	cop	_	_
8	busy	busy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **want** | present | I | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot nothing=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | to-infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  |  |  | busy *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 Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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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