---
title: Ah! how nice it would be to be as pretty as that.’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Ah! how nice it would be to be as pretty as that.’ Who acts: shepherdess. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Branch, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Golden Branch, part 2, sentence 21

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Ah! how nice it would be to be as pretty as that.’

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

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Branch, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (shepherdess), 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:pg540:35:21
# text = Ah! how nice it would be to be as pretty as that.’
1	Ah	ah	INTJ	UH	_	4	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
3	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	4	advmod	_	_
4	nice	nice	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
6	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
7	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	cop	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
9	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	cop	_	_
10	as	as	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	pretty	pretty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
12	as	as	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	NFP	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | would | shepherdess |  |  |  |  | as that; pretty *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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