---
title: His only work would be to dust my old books.’ — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: His only work would be to dust my old books.’ Who acts: only work, boy. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 24, 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/pg5615/24/12/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 24, sentence 12

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His only work would be to dust my old books.’

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**Who acts:** only work, boy · **What happens:** be, work

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 24. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (only work, boy), 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:pg5615:24:12
# text = His only work would be to dust my old books.’
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
2	only	only	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	work	work	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
4	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
5	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	cop	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	dust	dust	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
9	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	books	book	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | would | boy's only work |  |  |  |  | dust *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **work** |  | boy |  |  |  |  |  | nom work «act 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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