---
title: “My poor wife is dead,” replied Abu Nowas. — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “My poor wife is dead,” replied Abu Nowas. Who acts: poor wife, Abu. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 28, 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/pg2435/28/124/)

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 28, sentence 124

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“My poor wife is dead,” replied Abu Nowas.

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**Who acts:** poor wife, Abu · **What happens:** be, reply · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 28. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor wife, Abu), 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:pg2435:28:124
# text = “My poor wife is dead,” replied Abu Nowas.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	My	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
3	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	dead	dead	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
9	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	Abu	Abu	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
11	Nowas	Nowas	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	flat	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | present | My poor wife |  |  |  |  | dead *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | Abu |  |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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 Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 2435 (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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