---
title: ‘Oh, well! if you are really in earnest then, listen.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Oh, well! if you are really in earnest then, listen.’ Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water., sentence 25

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‘Oh, well! if you are really in earnest then, listen.’

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** be, listen

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg641:16:25
# text = ‘Oh, well! if you are really in earnest then, listen.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	14	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	well	well	INTJ	UH	_	2	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
6	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
8	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
9	really	really	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	earnest	earn	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	2	vocative	_	_
12	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	2	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
14	listen	listen	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | you |  |  |  |  | earn *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **listen** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=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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