---
title: 'Poor child,' answered the dove, 'who has sent you on such a useless… — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'Poor child,' answered the dove, 'who has sent you on such a useless quest?' Who acts: Poor child. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 33, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 33, sentence 55

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'Poor child,' answered the dove, 'who has sent you on such a useless quest?'

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**Who acts:** Poor child · **What happens:** answer, send · **To what, where:** dove, you, useless quest · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 33. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Poor child), 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:pg3027:33:55
# text = 'Poor child,' answered the dove, 'who has sent you on such a useless quest?'
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	dove	dove	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	13	nsubj	_	_
12	has	have	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	sent	send	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	6	ccomp	_	_
14	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	iobj	_	_
15	on	on	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
16	such	such	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	19	det:predet	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
18	useless	useless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	quest	quest	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | Poor child | the dove |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **send** | present · perfect |  |  | you | such useless quest |  |  | vn confine-92-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent you=Theme |

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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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