---
title: “It may be,” said the Lion. — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz · tree and pragmatics
description: “It may be,” said the Lion. Who acts: disease, Lion. A sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter VI. The Cowardly Lion, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapter VI. The Cowardly Lion, sentence 57

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“It may be,” said the Lion.

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**Who acts:** disease, Lion · **What happens:** be, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter VI. The Cowardly Lion. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (disease, Lion), 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:pg55:8:57
# text = “It may be,” said the Lion.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	Lion	Lion	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** *in a quote* | may | disease |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Lion |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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 Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Project Gutenberg book 55 (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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