---
title: It is not our business to animadvert upon these lines; we are not cr… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It is not our business to animadvert upon these lines; we are not critics, but historians. Who acts: name, we. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Whittington, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The History of Whittington, sentence 66

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It is not our business to animadvert upon these lines; we are not critics, but historians.

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**Who acts:** name, we · **What happens:** not be, animadvert · **To what, where:** business, critics

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Whittington. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (name, we), 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:pg503:29:66
# text = It is not our business to animadvert upon these lines; we are not critics, but historians.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
4	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	business	business	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	animadvert	animadvert	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	acl	_	_
8	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	these	this	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	10	det	_	_
10	lines	line	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	15	punct	_	_
12	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
13	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
14	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	15	advmod	_	_
15	critics	critic	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
17	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
18	historians	historian	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is a** | present | name | our business and critics but historians |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **animadvert** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | upon this lines | tree rules |
| 3 | **not** **is a** | present | we | critics but historians |  |  |  |  | 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 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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