---
title: And, after all, what is it but a gazelle, that I bought for an eight… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And, after all, what is it but a gazelle, that I bought for an eighth?’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of a Gazelle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Story of a Gazelle, sentence 264

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And, after all, what is it but a gazelle, that I bought for an eighth?’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** be, buy · **To what, where:** gazelle, that

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of a Gazelle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg641:15:264
# text = And, after all, what is it but a gazelle, that I bought for an eighth?’
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
3	after	after	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
6	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	11	nsubj	_	_
7	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	gazelle	gazelle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	15	obj	_	_
14	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	bought	buy	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	parataxis	_	_
16	for	for	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	eighth	eighth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	’	'	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** | present |  | a gazelle |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **buy** | past | I | that |  |  |  | for a eighth | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP PP.beneficiary»: agent=Agent that=Theme for eighth=Beneficiary |

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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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