---
title: ‘Dead!’ he repeated, stepping a little backwards. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Dead!’ he repeated, stepping a little backwards. Who acts: pause. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 21, 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/pg3454/21/113/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 21, sentence 113

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‘Dead!’ he repeated, stepping a little backwards.

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**Who acts:** pause · **What happens:** repeat, step · **To what, where:** little

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 21. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (pause), 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:pg3454:21:113
# text = ‘Dead!’ he repeated, stepping a little backwards.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Dead	dead	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	repeated	repeat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	stepping	step	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	obj	_	_
11	backwards	backwards	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **repeat** | past | pause |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |
| 2 | **step** | gerund | pause *not said here* | a little |  |  |  | backwards *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Initial\_Location little=Theme |

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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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