---
title: “Alas! where are now my children, my poor children?” — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Alas! where are now my children, my poor children?” A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Little Thumb, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Little Thumb, sentence 38

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“Alas! where are now my children, my poor children?”

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**What happens:** be · **To what, where:** children

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Little Thumb. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg503:33:38
# text = “Alas! where are now my children, my poor children?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Alas	alas	INTJ	UH	_	4	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
4	where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	0	root	_	_
5	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
6	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	8	advmod	_	_
7	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
11	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | present |  | my children and my poor children |  |  | now |  | 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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- ← previous: [sentence 37](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/33/37/)
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