---
title: 'Nonsense, wife,' answered he crossly. ' — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'Nonsense, wife,' answered he crossly. ' Who acts: Nonsense. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 39, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/39/58/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Orange Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/) / [Opening, part 39](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/39/) / 58

# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 39, sentence 58

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
'Nonsense, wife,' answered he crossly. '

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Nonsense · **What happens:** answer

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 39. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Nonsense), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg3027:39:58
# text = 'Nonsense, wife,' answered he crossly. '
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Nonsense	nonsense	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
7	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	crossly	crossly	ADV	RB	_	7	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
11	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | Nonsense and wife |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 57](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/39/57/)
- next →: [sentence 59](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/39/59/)
- ↑ back to [Opening, part 39](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/39/)