---
title: ‘But surely there are great numbers of people in your land, if no on… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘But surely there are great numbers of people in your land, if no one ever dies?’ Who acts: one. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Voice of Death, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Voice of Death, sentence 8

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‘But surely there are great numbers of people in your land, if no one ever dies?’

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**Who acts:** one · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Voice of Death. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (one), 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:pg540:27:8
# text = ‘But surely there are great numbers of people in your land, if no one ever dies?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
3	surely	surely	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
4	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	5	expl	_	_
5	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
6	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	numbers	number	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nmod	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	land	land	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
14	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
15	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	16	det	_	_
16	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
17	ever	ever	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	16	advmod	_	_
18	dies	die	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	18	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | no one |  |  |  |  | die *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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