---
title: He is for ever speaking ill of you but I only reply by my tears. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He is for ever speaking ill of you but I only reply by my tears. Who acts: Aladdin, I. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, sentence 217

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He is for ever speaking ill of you but I only reply by my tears.

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**Who acts:** Aladdin, I · **What happens:** speak, reply · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Aladdin, I), 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:pg503:12:217
# text = He is for ever speaking ill of you but I only reply by my tears.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
3	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
4	ever	ever	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	5	advmod	_	_
5	speaking	speak	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	ill	ill	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	xcomp	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	obl	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
10	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
11	only	only	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	reply	reply	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
13	by	by	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	tears	tear	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* | present · progressive | Aladdin |  |  |  | ever | ill *property* | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: assert* | present | I |  |  |  |  | by my tears | 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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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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