---
title: 'Then they did very ill,' answered the king, with a frown. ' — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'Then they did very ill,' answered the king, with a frown. ' Who acts: servants. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 37, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 37, sentence 89

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'Then they did very ill,' answered the king, with a frown. '

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**Who acts:** servants · **What happens:** do, answer · **To what, where:** king

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 37. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (servants), 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:pg3027:37:89
# text = 'Then they did very ill,' answered the king, with a frown. '
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
3	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	did	do	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	very	very	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	ill	ill	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
9	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	frown	frown	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
17	'	'	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 | **do** | past | servants *= servant* |  |  |  | then | ill *property* | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past |  |  | the king |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent king=Eventuality |

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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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