---
title: “I played ninepins,” he answered, “and lost a few pence.” — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “I played ninepins,” he answered, “and lost a few pence.” Who acts: King. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, sentence 139

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“I played ninepins,” he answered, “and lost a few pence.”

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**Who acts:** King · **What happens:** play, answer, lose · **To what, where:** ninepins, few pence · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (King), 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:pg503:13:139
# text = “I played ninepins,” he answered, “and lost a few pence.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	played	play	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	ninepins	ninepin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	lost	lose	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	pence	pence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **play** *in a quote* | past | King | ninepins |  |  |  |  | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent ninepin=Theme clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | King |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **lose** *in a quote* | past |  | a few pence |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent pence=Eventuality |

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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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