---
title: Nothing--nothing," replied the dame; "but dinna tell your mother who… — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Nothing--nothing," replied the dame; "but dinna tell your mother who spun the yarn." Who acts: Nothing, mother. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 17, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/31/24/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 17, sentence 24

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Nothing--nothing," replied the dame; "but dinna tell your mother who spun the yarn."

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**Who acts:** Nothing, mother · **What happens:** reply, tell, spin · **To what, where:** dame, yarn · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Nothing, mother), 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:pg14241:31:24
# text = Nothing--nothing," replied the dame; "but dinna tell your mother who spun the yarn."
1	Nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	1	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
6	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	dame	dame	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
12	dinna	dinna	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	13	dep	_	_
13	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	parataxis	_	_
14	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
16	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	17	nsubj	_	_
17	spun	spin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	acl:relcl	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	yarn	yarn	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reply** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | Nothing | the dame |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | infinitive | your mother |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **spin** | past | your mother | the yarn |  |  |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent yarn=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:** «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.

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