---
title: But Death was not so near as the doctors thought, and still he linge… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But Death was not so near as the doctors thought, and still he lingered. Who acts: Death, doctors. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Nettle Spinner, sentence 139

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But Death was not so near as the doctors thought, and still he lingered.

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**Who acts:** Death, doctors · **What happens:** not be, think, linger

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Death, doctors), 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:pg540:42:139
# text = But Death was not so near as the doctors thought, and still he lingered.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
2	Death	Death	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
5	so	so	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	near	near	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
7	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	doctors	doctor	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
10	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
13	still	still	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
14	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	lingered	linger	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** | past | Death |  |  |  |  | near *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* | past | the doctors |  |  |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **linger** | past | death |  |  |  | still |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=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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