---
title: 'I never talk gossip,' she said severely. ' — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'I never talk gossip,' she said severely. ' Who acts: I, lark. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 32, 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/pg3027/32/130/)

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 32, sentence 130

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'I never talk gossip,' she said severely. '

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**Who acts:** I, lark · **What happens:** not talk, say · **To what, where:** gossip · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 32. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, lark), 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:pg3027:32:130
# text = 'I never talk gossip,' she said severely. '
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	talk	talk	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	gossip	gossip	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
8	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
10	severely	severely	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
12	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **talk** | present | I | gossip |  |  |  |  | vn compel-59.1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent gossip=Patient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | lark |  |  |  |  | severely *property* | 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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