---
title: She was still busy with them when a voice behind her said: — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: She was still busy with them when a voice behind her said: Who acts: Eglantine, voice. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 24, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 24, sentence 73

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She was still busy with them when a voice behind her said:

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**Who acts:** Eglantine, voice · **What happens:** be, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 24. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Eglantine, voice), 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:pg3027:24:73
# text = She was still busy with them when a voice behind her said:
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	still	still	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	busy	busy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	with	with	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obl	_	_
7	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	12	advmod	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	voice	voice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
10	behind	behind	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nmod	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | Eglantine |  |  |  | still | with knots *= knot*; busy *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | a voice behind Eglantine |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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 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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