---
title: ‘Is there no way of changing the reindeer into a human being again?’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Is there no way of changing the reindeer into a human being again?’ Who acts: way. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Birch, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Wonderful Birch, sentence 176

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‘Is there no way of changing the reindeer into a human being again?’

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**Who acts:** way · **What happens:** be, change · **To what, where:** way, reindeer

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Birch. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (way), 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:pg540:14:176
# text = ‘Is there no way of changing the reindeer into a human being again?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
4	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	5	det	_	_
5	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	of	of	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
7	changing	change	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	5	acl	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	reindeer	reindeer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	into	into	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	human	human	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	obl	_	_
13	being	be	AUX	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	14	cop	_	_
14	again	again	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | no way |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **change** | gerund | no way *not said here* | the reindeer |  |  |  | into a human *result* | vn turn-26.6.1-1 «NP V NP.patient PP.result»: agent=Agent reindeer=Patient into human=Result |
| 3 | **is** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  | again *property* | 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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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