---
title: ‘The rib of a whale shall be our silver spoon.’ — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘The rib of a whale shall be our silver spoon.’ Who acts: rib. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Dragon and His Grandmother, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Dragon and His Grandmother, sentence 64

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‘The rib of a whale shall be our silver spoon.’

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**Who acts:** rib · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** silver spoon

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Dragon and His Grandmother. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (rib), 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:pg640:9:64
# text = ‘The rib of a whale shall be our silver spoon.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	rib	rib	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	whale	whale	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
7	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
8	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	cop	_	_
9	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
10	silver	silver	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
11	spoon	spoon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | shall | the rib of a whale | our silver spoon |  |  |  |  | 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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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