---
title: Br-r-r, so he began to beat his drum. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Br-r-r, so he began to beat his drum. Who acts: Br. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 8, 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/pg3454/8/37/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 8, sentence 37

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Br-r-r, so he began to beat his drum.

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**Who acts:** Br · **What happens:** begin, beat · **To what, where:** r r, drum

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Br), 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:pg3454:8:37
# text = Br-r-r, so he began to beat his drum.
1	Br	br	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	r	r	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	r	r	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	so	so	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	beat	beat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	xcomp	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	drum	drum	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past | Br | r r *not said here* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **beat** | to-infinitive | Br *not said here* | Br's drum |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location drum=Theme |

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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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