---
title: He kept silence, however, till the evening, when he said to his mist… — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He kept silence, however, till the evening, when he said to his mistress: Who acts: buffalo. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 21, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 21, sentence 54

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He kept silence, however, till the evening, when he said to his mistress:

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**Who acts:** buffalo · **What happens:** keep, say · **To what, where:** silence, mistress · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 21. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (buffalo), 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:pg3027:21:54
# text = He kept silence, however, till the evening, when he said to his mistress:
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	kept	keep	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	silence	silence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
5	however	however	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	till	till	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	evening	evening	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	13	advmod	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	mistress	mistress	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **keep** | past | buffalo | silence |  |  | evening | however *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent silence=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | buffalo |  | buffalo's mistress |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to mistress=Recipient |

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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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