---
title: Lie down on the floor, and pretend to be dead, and be sure not to sp… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Lie down on the floor, and pretend to be dead, and be sure not to speak, whatever happens. Who acts: you, whatever. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 12, 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/pg3454/12/44/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 12, sentence 44

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Lie down on the floor, and pretend to be dead, and be sure not to speak, whatever happens.

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**Who acts:** you, whatever · **What happens:** lie down, pretend, be, not speak, happen · **To what, where:** floor · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, whatever), 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:pg3454:12:44
# text = Lie down on the floor, and pretend to be dead, and be sure not to speak, whatever happens.
1	Lie	lie	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	down	down	ADV	RB	_	1	advmod	_	_
3	on	on	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	floor	floor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	pretend	pretend	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	1	conj	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
10	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	cop	_	_
11	dead	dead	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	cop	_	_
15	sure	sure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	1	parataxis	_	_
16	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	18	advmod	_	_
17	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	mark	_	_
18	speak	speak	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
20	whatever	whatever	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	21	nsubj	_	_
21	happens	happen	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lie down** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  | the floor |  | down *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on floor=Location |
| 2 | **pretend** | infinitive | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **is** | to-infinitive | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  | dead *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **is** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | sure *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **not** **speak** *speech: other* | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 6 | **happen** | present | whatever |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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