---
title: ‘Twas really then beyond all belief or telling the dancing. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Twas really then beyond all belief or telling the dancing. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 18, 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/pg3454/18/30/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 18, sentence 30

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‘Twas really then beyond all belief or telling the dancing.

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**What happens:** tell · **To what, where:** dancing · **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 18. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg3454:18:30
# text = ‘Twas really then beyond all belief or telling the dancing.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Twas	twa	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	_
3	really	really	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
4	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	7	advmod	_	_
5	beyond	beyond	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	7	det	_	_
7	belief	belief	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
8	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	telling	tell	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	7	conj	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	dancing	dancing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | gerund |  | the dancing |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent dancing=Recipient |

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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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