---
title: ‘Would it not be well,’ said Owen, ‘to go and discover the place?’ — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Would it not be well,’ said Owen, ‘to go and discover the place?’ Who acts: dishonour, Owen. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 30, 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/pg3454/30/65/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 30, sentence 65

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‘Would it not be well,’ said Owen, ‘to go and discover the place?’

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**Who acts:** dishonour, Owen · **What happens:** not be, say, go, discover · **To what, where:** place · **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 30. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (dishonour, Owen), 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:pg3454:30:65
# text = ‘Would it not be well,’ said Owen, ‘to go and discover the place?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
6	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	Owen	Owen	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
14	go	go	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	9	ccomp	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
16	discover	discover	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	14	conj	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **be** | would | dishonour |  |  |  |  | well *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Owen |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **go** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **discover** | infinitive |  | the place |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent place=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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