---
title: ‘Is it true what I hear of thee, that thou canst burnish swords?’ — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Is it true what I hear of thee, that thou canst burnish swords?’ Who acts: porter, I, that. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 39, 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/pg3454/39/76/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 39, sentence 76

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‘Is it true what I hear of thee, that thou canst burnish swords?’

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**Who acts:** porter, I, that · **What happens:** be, hear, burnish · **To what, where:** swords

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 39. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (porter, I, that), 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:pg3454:39:76
# text = ‘Is it true what I hear of thee, that thou canst burnish swords?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	true	true	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
6	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	hear	hear	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	thee	thou	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=2|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	14	nsubj	_	_
12	thou	thou	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=2|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	14	nsubj	_	_
13	canst	can	AUX	MD	Style=Arch|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	burnish	burnish	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	parataxis	_	_
15	swords	sword	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | porter |  |  |  |  | true *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **hear** | present | I |  |  |  |  | of thee | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer what=Stimulus |
| 3 | **burnish** | can | that | swords |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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