---
title: ‘I am so afraid that the whales would swallow us up, and the big dog… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I am so afraid that the whales would swallow us up, and the big dogs bite us. Who acts: I, whales, big dogs. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 14, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 14, sentence 100

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‘I am so afraid that the whales would swallow us up, and the big dogs bite us.

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**Who acts:** I, whales, big dogs · **What happens:** be, swallow up, bite · **To what, where:** us

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 14. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, whales, big dogs), 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:pg3454:14:100
# text = ‘I am so afraid that the whales would swallow us up, and the big dogs bite us.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	so	so	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	afraid	afraid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
6	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	whales	whale	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
9	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	swallow	swallow	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	advcl	_	_
11	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	_
12	up	up	ADP	RP	_	10	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
16	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	dogs	dog	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	nsubj	_	_
18	bite	bite	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
19	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	18	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | I |  |  |  |  | afraid *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **swallow up** | would | the whales | us |  |  |  |  | vn gobble-39.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent we=Patient |
| 3 | **bite** | present | the big dogs | us |  |  |  |  | vn swat-18.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent we=Patient |

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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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