---
title: “A friend,” answered the other. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “A friend,” answered the other. Who acts: friend. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Whittington, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The History of Whittington, sentence 58

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“A friend,” answered the other.

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**Who acts:** friend · **What happens:** answer · **To what, where:** other

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Whittington. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (friend), 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:pg503:29:58
# text = “A friend,” answered the other.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	friend	friend	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | a friend | the other |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent other=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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