---
title: Ah, me! what's the world a-coming to? — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Ah, me! what's the world a-coming to? A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Cauld Lad of Hilton, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, The Cauld Lad of Hilton, sentence 7

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Ah, me! what's the world a-coming to?

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**What happens:** be, come · **To what, where:** world

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Cauld Lad of Hilton. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg7439:44:7
# text = Ah, me! what's the world a-coming to?
1	Ah	ah	INTJ	UH	_	8	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	1	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	world	world	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	coming	come	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	nmod	_	_
12	to	to	ADP	IN	_	11	fixed	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | the world |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **come** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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:** «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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