---
title: ‘The sun would burn us, and the lions and the crocodiles would eat u… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘The sun would burn us, and the lions and the crocodiles would eat us up. Who acts: sun, lions. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/14/129/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 14, sentence 129

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‘The sun would burn us, and the lions and the crocodiles would eat us up.

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**Who acts:** sun, lions · **What happens:** burn, eat up · **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 (sun, lions), 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:pg3454:14:129
# text = ‘The sun would burn us, and the lions and the crocodiles would eat us up.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	sun	sun	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	burn	burn	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	lions	lion	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	nsubj	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	crocodiles	crocodile	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	conj	_	_
14	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	parataxis	_	_
16	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	obj	_	_
17	up	up	ADP	RP	_	15	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **burn** | would | the sun | us |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent we=Theme |
| 2 | **eat up** | would | the lions and the crocodiles | us |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «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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