---
title: ‘I was thinking what a beautiful club it was, and what a pity it is… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I was thinking what a beautiful club it was, and what a pity it is that it should cause your death.’ Who acts: I, club, your. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Stan Bolovan, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, Stan Bolovan, sentence 95

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‘I was thinking what a beautiful club it was, and what a pity it is that it should cause your death.’

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**Who acts:** I, club, your · **What happens:** think, pity, be, die · **To what, where:** pity

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Stan Bolovan. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, club, your), 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:pg641:13:95
# text = ‘I was thinking what a beautiful club it was, and what a pity it is that it should cause your death.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	thinking	think	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	ccomp	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	club	club	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
13	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	15	nsubj	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	pity	pity	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
16	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
17	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	21	cop	_	_
18	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	21	mark	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
20	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	21	aux	_	_
21	cause	cause	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	acl:relcl	_	_
22	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	23	nmod:poss	_	_
23	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **think** *speech: other* | past · progressive | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **pity** |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **is** | should · present | club | a pity *not said here* |  |  |  | cause *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **die** |  | your |  |  |  |  |  | nom death «event 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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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