---
title: ‘Alas, little creature! what are you coming to look for here? — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Alas, little creature! what are you coming to look for here? Who acts: Alas. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Good Mouse, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Little Good Mouse, sentence 43

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‘Alas, little creature! what are you coming to look for here?

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**Who acts:** Alas · **What happens:** come, look

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Good Mouse. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Alas), 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:pg540:22:43
# text = ‘Alas, little creature! what are you coming to look for here?
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Alas	Alas	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
4	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	creature	creature	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
7	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	10	obj	_	_
8	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
9	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	coming	come	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	look	look	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	advcl	_	_
13	for	for	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	here	here	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | present · progressive | Alas |  |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location what=Theme |
| 2 | **look** | to-infinitive | Alas *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn rummage-35.5 «NP V PP.location PP.theme»: agent=Agent for here=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 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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