---
title: Surely they are far too small for my father?’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Surely they are far too small for my father?’ Who acts: shirts. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Brothers, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Twelve Brothers, sentence 31

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Surely they are far too small for my father?’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** shirts · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Brothers. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (shirts), 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:pg540:41:31
# text = Surely they are far too small for my father?’
1	Surely	surely	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	far	far	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	6	advmod	_	_
5	too	too	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
7	for	for	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | shirts *= shirt* |  |  |  |  | for my father; far, small, surely *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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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