---
title: A very comical sight was Moti when he rode out to the war. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: A very comical sight was Moti when he rode out to the war. Who acts: comical sight, Moti. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 16, 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/pg3454/16/7/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 16, sentence 7

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A very comical sight was Moti when he rode out to the war.

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**Who acts:** comical sight, Moti · **What happens:** be, ride out · **To what, where:** Moti, war

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (comical sight, Moti), 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:pg3454:16:7
# text = A very comical sight was Moti when he rode out to the war.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
2	very	very	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	comical	comical	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	sight	sight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
5	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	Moti	Moti	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
7	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	9	advmod	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	rode	ride	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	out	out	ADP	RP	_	9	compound:prt	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	war	war	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | a comical sight | Moti |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **ride out** | past | Moti |  |  | the war |  |  | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent to war=Trajectory |

<!-- .note -->
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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