---
title: But she only gave him answers that told him nothing. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But she only gave him answers that told him nothing. Who acts: enchanter, answers. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Cat, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The White Cat, part 2, sentence 47

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But she only gave him answers that told him nothing.

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**Who acts:** enchanter, answers · **What happens:** give, tell · **To what, where:** answers, fairy, nothing · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Cat, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (enchanter, answers), 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:pg503:24:47
# text = But she only gave him answers that told him nothing.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	only	only	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	gave	give	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	iobj	_	_
6	answers	answer	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
7	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	8	nsubj	_	_
8	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	acl:relcl	_	_
9	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	iobj	_	_
10	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give** | past | enchanter | answers | fairy |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent he=Recipient answer=Theme |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | answers | nothing | fairy |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent he=Recipient nothing=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 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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