---
title: What a villain he was, wasn't he? — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: What a villain he was, wasn't he? Who acts: villain. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 16, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/30/80/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [More English Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/) / [More English Fairy Tales, part 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/30/) / 80

# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 16, sentence 80

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
What a villain he was, wasn't he?

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** villain · **What happens:** not be · **To what, where:** father

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (villain), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg14241:30:80
# text = What a villain he was, wasn't he?
1	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	3	det	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	villain	villain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
7	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	9	advmod	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is a** | past | what villain | father |  |  |  |  | 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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 14241 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 79](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/30/79/)
- next →: [sentence 81](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/30/81/)
- ↑ back to [More English Fairy Tales, part 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/30/)