---
title: “Sister, what do you see? do you see old times coming back?” — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Sister, what do you see? do you see old times coming back?” Who acts: you, Sister, old times. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Terrible Head, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Terrible Head, sentence 53

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“Sister, what do you see? do you see old times coming back?”

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**Who acts:** you, Sister, old times · **What happens:** see, come back · **To what, where:** Sister

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Terrible Head. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, Sister, old times), 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:pg503:27:53
# text = “Sister, what do you see? do you see old times coming back?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Sister	sister	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
5	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
9	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
12	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obl:unmarked	_	_
14	coming	come	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	13	acl	_	_
15	back	back	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** *in a quote* | present · do-support | you | Sister |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer what=Stimulus |
| 2 | **see** *in a quote* | present · do-support | Sister |  |  |  | time |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **come back** *in a quote* | gerund | old times *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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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