---
title: 'Oh,' said he, 'my wife died, and I sold her.' — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'Oh,' said he, 'my wife died, and I sold her.' Who acts: Goldsmith, I. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 11, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 11, sentence 91

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'Oh,' said he, 'my wife died, and I sold her.'

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**Who acts:** Goldsmith, I · **What happens:** say, die, sell · **To what, where:** wife · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 11. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Goldsmith, 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:pg3027:11:91
# text = 'Oh,' said he, 'my wife died, and I sold her.'
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	5	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
8	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
11	died	die	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	sold	sell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	ccomp	_	_
16	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **die** | past | Goldsmith |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 3 | **sell** | past | I | wife |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent she=Theme |

<!-- .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:** «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (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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