---
title: So she talked, as mothers will, to anyone that would listen to her. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: So she talked, as mothers will, to anyone that would listen to her. Who acts: mother. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 17, 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/pg3282/17/41/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 17, sentence 41

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So she talked, as mothers will, to anyone that would listen to her.

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**Who acts:** mother · **What happens:** talk, listen · **To what, where:** mother

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother), 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:pg3282:17:41
# text = So she talked, as mothers will, to anyone that would listen to her.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	talked	talk	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
5	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
6	mothers	mother	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	to	to	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	anyone	anyone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	3	obl	_	_
11	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	13	nsubj	_	_
12	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	listen	listen	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	acl:relcl	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **talk** | past | mother |  |  |  |  | to anyone | vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent to anyone=Co-Agent |
| 2 | **listen** | would |  |  | mother |  |  |  | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent to she=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 Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (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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