---
title: ‘It was all quite fair; we tried it twice over.’ — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘It was all quite fair; we tried it twice over.’ Who acts: apple, we. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 3, 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/pg3454/3/23/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 3, sentence 23

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‘It was all quite fair; we tried it twice over.’

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**Who acts:** apple, we · **What happens:** be, try · **To what, where:** apple

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (apple, we), 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:pg3454:3:23
# text = ‘It was all quite fair; we tried it twice over.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	all	all	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
5	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	fair	fair	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	9	punct	_	_
8	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	parataxis	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	_
11	twice	twice	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	12	advmod	_	_
12	over	over	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | apple |  |  |  |  | all, fair *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **try** | past | we | apple |  |  |  | over *property* | vn try-61.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality |

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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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