---
title: 'You sold your dead wife?' cried the people. — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'You sold your dead wife?' cried the people. Who acts: You. 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 92

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'You sold your dead wife?' cried the people.

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**Who acts:** You · **What happens:** sell, cry · **To what, where:** dead wife, people

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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 (You), 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:pg3027:11:92
# text = 'You sold your dead wife?' cried the people.
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	sold	sell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	parataxis	_	_
4	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
5	dead	dead	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
9	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	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 | **sell** | past | You | your dead wife |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wife=Theme |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | past |  | the people |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent people=Topic |

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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 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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