---
title: “Oh!” answered the girl, “I have to spin straw into gold, and haven’… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Oh!” answered the girl, “I have to spin straw into gold, and haven’t a notion how it’s done.” Who acts: girl. 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 199

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“Oh!” answered the girl, “I have to spin straw into gold, and haven’t a notion how it’s done.”

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** girl · **What happens:** answer, have, spin, do · **To what, where:** straw, gold · **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 (girl), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg503:13:199
# text = “Oh!” answered the girl, “I have to spin straw into gold, and haven’t a notion how it’s done.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	5	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	26	advcl	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	spin	spin	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
14	straw	straw	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
15	into	into	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	gold	gold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
18	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
19	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	26	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	22	advmod	_	_
21	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	notion	notion	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obj	_	_
23	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	26	advmod	_	_
24	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	26	nsubj:pass	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	’s	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	26	aux:pass	_	_
26	done	do	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	26	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
28	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	26	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | the girl |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **have** *in a quote* | present | the girl *= girl* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **spin** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | the girl *= girl* *not said here* | straw |  | gold |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP PP.trajectory»: agent=Agent straw=Theme into gold=Trajectory |
| 4 | **do** *in a quote* | present · passive |  | straw |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Eventuality |

<!-- .note -->
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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