---
title: ‘Well,’ he said, ‘where has Little Lasse been so long?’ — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Well,’ he said, ‘where has Little Lasse been so long?’ Who acts: gardener. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 15, 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/pg3454/15/25/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 15, sentence 25

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‘Well,’ he said, ‘where has Little Lasse been so long?’

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**Who acts:** gardener · **What happens:** say, have, be · **To what, where:** Little · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 15. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (gardener), 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:pg3454:15:25
# text = ‘Well,’ he said, ‘where has Little Lasse been so long?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Well	well	INTJ	UH	_	6	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	10	advmod	_	_
10	has	have	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	advcl	_	_
11	Little	Little	ADJ	NNP	Degree=Pos	10	obj	_	_
12	Lasse	Lasse	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	flat	_	_
13	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	15	cop	_	_
14	so	so	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | gardener |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **have** | present |  | Little |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent little=Patient |
| 3 | **is** | participle |  |  |  |  |  | long *property* | tree rules |

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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 Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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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