---
title: ‘“If I were sure of that,” hesitated the donkey. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘“If I were sure of that,” hesitated the donkey. Who acts: hare, I. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 6, 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/pg3454/6/47/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 6, sentence 47

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‘“If I were sure of that,” hesitated the donkey.

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**Who acts:** hare, I · **What happens:** be, hesitate · **To what, where:** donkey

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (hare, I), 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:pg3454:6:47
# text = ‘“If I were sure of that,” hesitated the donkey.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	sure	sure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
11	hesitated	hesitate	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	ccomp	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	donkey	donkey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	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** *in a quote* | past | the hare *= hare* |  |  |  |  | of that; sure *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **hesitate** | past | I *not said here* | the donkey |  |  |  |  | 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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