---
title: ‘Were there ever two people so unhappy!’ said a woman’s voice. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Were there ever two people so unhappy!’ said a woman’s voice. Who acts: two people. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac 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/pg3454/7/19/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 7, sentence 19

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‘Were there ever two people so unhappy!’ said a woman’s voice.

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**Who acts:** two people · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** voice · **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 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (two people), 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:pg3454:7:19
# text = ‘Were there ever two people so unhappy!’ said a woman’s voice.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	11	advmod	_	_
4	ever	ever	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	6	advmod	_	_
5	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	6	nummod	_	_
6	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
7	so	so	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	unhappy	unhappy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	’s	's	PART	POS	_	13	case	_	_
15	voice	voice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | there *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | two people | a woman's voice |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent voice=Topic |

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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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