---
title: ‘Why, it is surely the idiot, riding my colt thirteen months old!’ — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Why, it is surely the idiot, riding my colt thirteen months old!’ Who acts: head, idiot. 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/pg3454/27/92/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 27, sentence 92

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‘Why, it is surely the idiot, riding my colt thirteen months old!’

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**Who acts:** head, idiot · **What happens:** be, ride · **To what, where:** idiot, colt

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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 (head, idiot), 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:pg3454:27:92
# text = ‘Why, it is surely the idiot, riding my colt thirteen months old!’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
6	surely	surely	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	idiot	idiot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	riding	ride	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	acl	_	_
11	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	colt	colt	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	thirteen	thirteen	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	nummod	_	_
14	months	month	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obl:unmarked	_	_
15	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	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** | present | head | the idiot |  |  |  | surely *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **ride** | gerund | the idiot *not said here* | my colt |  |  |  | old *obl* | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent colt=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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