---
title: “Yes,” answered Ball-Carrier, “it was I who took them.” — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Yes,” answered Ball-Carrier, “it was I who took them.” Who acts: Ball, mouthful. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 7, 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/pg3282/7/35/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 7, sentence 35

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“Yes,” answered Ball-Carrier, “it was I who took them.”

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**Who acts:** Ball, mouthful · **What happens:** answer, be, take · **To what, where:** Ball, gold · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Ball, mouthful), 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:pg3282:7:35
# text = “Yes,” answered Ball-Carrier, “it was I who took them.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Yes	yes	INTJ	UH	Polarity=Pos	5	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	Ball	Ball	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	Carrier	Carrier	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
10	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
13	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
14	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	15	nsubj	_	_
15	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
16	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	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 | Ball and Carrier |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | past | mouthful | Ball and Carrier *= ball* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **take** *in a quote* | past | Ball and Carrier *= ball* | gold |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme |

<!-- .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.

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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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