---
title: “Oh!” she cried, “what can they be? — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Oh!” she cried, “what can they be? Who acts: Princess, hands. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Sheep, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Wonderful Sheep, part 2, sentence 5

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“Oh!” she cried, “what can they be?

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**Who acts:** Princess, hands · **What happens:** cry, be · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Sheep, 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 (Princess, hands), 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:pg503:31:5
# text = “Oh!” she cried, “what can they be?
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	6	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	12	obj	_	_
10	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | Princess |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **can** *in a quote* | can | hands *= hand* |  |  |  |  |  | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot what=Theme |

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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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