---
title: I am only a little backward, perhaps, in my growth.’ — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: I am only a little backward, perhaps, in my growth.’ Who acts: I, my. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 11, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/11/140/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 11, sentence 140

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I am only a little backward, perhaps, in my growth.’

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**Who acts:** I, my · **What happens:** be, grow

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 11. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, my), 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:pg5615:11:140
# text = I am only a little backward, perhaps, in my growth.’
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	only	only	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
6	backward	backward	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	perhaps	perhaps	ADV	RB	_	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	growth	growth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | I |  |  |  |  | backward, little *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **grow** |  | my |  |  |  |  |  | nom growth «process intransitive»: poss=agent |

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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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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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