---
title: ‘“We used to be on the green fir-boughs. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘“We used to be on the green fir-boughs. Who acts: We. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 4, 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/pg5615/4/110/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 4, sentence 110

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‘“We used to be on the green fir-boughs.

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**Who acts:** We · **What happens:** use, be · **To what, where:** green fir boughs

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We), 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:pg5615:4:110
# text = ‘“We used to be on the green fir-boughs.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	used	use	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
6	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	cop	_	_
7	on	on	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
9	green	green	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
10	fir	fir	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	boughs	bough	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **use** *in a quote* | past | We |  |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | We *not said here* |  |  | the green fir boughs |  |  | tree rules |

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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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