---
title: But the mother said, ‘Must I lose my dearest child too?’ — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the mother said, ‘Must I lose my dearest child too?’ Who acts: mother, I. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 3, 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/pg5615/3/15/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 3, sentence 15

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But the mother said, ‘Must I lose my dearest child too?’

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**Who acts:** mother, I · **What happens:** say, lose · **To what, where:** dearest child · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother, I), 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:pg5615:3:15
# text = But the mother said, ‘Must I lose my dearest child too?’
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
6	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	Must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
8	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	lose	lose	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	ccomp	_	_
10	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
11	dearest	dear	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	12	amod	_	_
12	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
13	too	too	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the mother |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **lose** | must | I | my dearest child |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Eventuality |

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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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