---
title: Could that really be his wife--that beautiful, beautiful creature? — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Could that really be his wife--that beautiful, beautiful creature? Who acts: that. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 4, 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/pg3454/4/18/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 4, sentence 18

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Could that really be his wife--that beautiful, beautiful creature?

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**Who acts:** that · **What happens:** be, creature · **To what, where:** wife

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg3454:4:18
# text = Could that really be his wife--that beautiful, beautiful creature?
1	Could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
2	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	nsubj	_	_
3	really	really	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	cop	_	_
5	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	12	nsubj	_	_
9	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
11	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	creature	creature	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | could | that | prince's wife and beautiful beautiful creature |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **creature** |  | that |  |  |  |  |  | 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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