---
title: The innkeeper and his wife did not need telling twice. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The innkeeper and his wife did not need telling twice. Who acts: innkeeper. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 9, 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/pg3282/9/48/)

<!-- 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 Brown Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/) / [The Brown Fairy Book, part 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/9/) / 48

# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 9, sentence 48

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The innkeeper and his wife did not need telling twice.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** innkeeper · **What happens:** not need, tell · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (innkeeper), 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:pg3282:9:48
# text = The innkeeper and his wife did not need telling twice.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	innkeeper	innkeeper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	_
6	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
7	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
8	need	need	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
9	telling	tell	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	xcomp	_	_
10	twice	twice	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	9	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **need** | past · do-support | the innkeeper and Eh's wife |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* *not said to happen* | gerund | the innkeeper and Eh's wife *not said here* |  |  |  |  | twice *property* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «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 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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 47](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/9/47/)
- next →: [sentence 49](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/9/49/)
- ↑ back to [The Brown Fairy Book, part 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/9/)