---
title: But the old snakes shook their heads and replied: — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the old snakes shook their heads and replied: Who acts: old snakes. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 22, 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/pg3454/22/14/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 22, sentence 14

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But the old snakes shook their heads and replied:

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**Who acts:** old snakes · **What happens:** shake, reply · **To what, where:** heads

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 22. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old snakes), 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:pg3454:22:14
# text = But the old snakes shook their heads and replied:
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	snakes	snake	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
5	shook	shake	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	replied	reply	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **shake** | past | the old snakes | things's heads |  |  |  |  | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V NP together»: agent=Agent head=Patient |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: assert* | participle | the old snakes *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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