---
title: ‘What a fool my brother was not to take more heed! — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What a fool my brother was not to take more heed! Who acts: brother. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Nunda, Eater of People, sentence 43

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‘What a fool my brother was not to take more heed!

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**Who acts:** brother · **What happens:** not be

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (brother), 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:pg641:29:43
# text = ‘What a fool my brother was not to take more heed!
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	4	det	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	fool	fool	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	brother	brother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
7	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
8	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	acl:relcl	_	_
11	more	more	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	12	amod	_	_
12	heed	heed	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	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 | **not** **is** | past | my brother |  |  |  |  | take *property* | 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 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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