---
title: Would the lady be there, as the old man had told him? — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Would the lady be there, as the old man had told him? Who acts: lady. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/27/80/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 27, sentence 80

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Would the lady be there, as the old man had told him?

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**Who acts:** lady · **What happens:** be, tell · **To what, where:** old man, instant · **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 27. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lady), 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:pg3454:27:80
# text = Would the lady be there, as the old man had told him?
1	Would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	lady	lady	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	cop	_	_
5	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
7	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj:pass	_	_
11	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	told	tell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	advcl	_	_
13	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	iobj	_	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** | would | the lady |  |  |  |  | there *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past · perfect · passive |  | the old man | instant |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: subject=Recipient he=Topic |

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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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