---
title: You seem old enough to work; I am afraid you are inclined to be lazy.” — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: You seem old enough to work; I am afraid you are inclined to be lazy.” Who acts: You, I. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Whittington and His Cat, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Whittington and His Cat, sentence 20

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
You seem old enough to work; I am afraid you are inclined to be lazy.”

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**Who acts:** You, I · **What happens:** seem, work, be, incline · **To what, where:** you

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Whittington and His Cat. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (You, 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:pg7439:37:20
# text = You seem old enough to work; I am afraid you are inclined to be lazy.”
1	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	seem	seem	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	xcomp	_	_
4	enough	enough	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	work	work	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	afraid	afraid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	conj	_	_
11	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux:pass	_	_
13	inclined	incline	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	ccomp	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
15	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	cop	_	_
16	lazy	lazy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **seem** | present | You |  |  |  |  | old *property* | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **work** | to-infinitive | You *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn employment-95.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** | present | I |  |  |  |  | afraid *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **incline** | present · passive |  | you |  |  |  |  | vn addict-96 «NP V NP PP.Theme»: subject=Patient |
| 5 | **is** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | lazy *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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