---
title: Were they--could they be--wolves? — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Were they--could they be--wolves? Who acts: forms. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 27, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 27, sentence 20

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Were they--could they be--wolves?

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**Who acts:** forms · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** forms

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 27. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (forms), 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:pg3454:27:20
# text = Were they--could they be--wolves?
1	Were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	cop	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	wolves	wolf	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past |  | forms *= form* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **can** | could | forms *= form* |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=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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