---
title: Now it was too late, he could not get back to land. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Now it was too late, he could not get back to land. Who acts: boat, Lasse. 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/pg3454/14/81/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 14, sentence 81

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Now it was too late, he could not get back to land.

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**Who acts:** boat, Lasse · **What happens:** be, not get back

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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 (boat, Lasse), 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:pg3454:14:81
# text = Now it was too late, he could not get back to land.
1	Now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	too	too	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	late	late	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
8	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
9	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
10	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
11	back	back	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
12	to	to	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	land	land	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | boat |  |  |  | now | late *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **get back** | could | Lasse |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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