---
title: ‘But the boy told me there were seven of you, and there are only six… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘But the boy told me there were seven of you, and there are only six here,’ said the king. Who acts: boy, seven, six. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23, 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/pg3454/23/6/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23, sentence 6

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‘But the boy told me there were seven of you, and there are only six here,’ said the king.

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**Who acts:** boy, seven, six · **What happens:** tell, be, say · **To what, where:** me, king · **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 23. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boy, seven, six), 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:pg3454:23:6
# text = ‘But the boy told me there were seven of you, and there are only six here,’ said the king.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	ccomp	_	_
6	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	iobj	_	_
7	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	8	expl	_	_
8	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	ccomp	_	_
9	seven	seven	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	nsubj	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	15	expl	_	_
15	are	be	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
16	only	only	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
17	six	six	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	15	nsubj	_	_
18	here	here	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	17	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
21	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
22	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	21	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | the boy |  | me |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent i=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **be** | past | seven of you |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **be** | present | six |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the king |  |  |  |  | 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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