---
title: “My poor master,” she said, “can neither eat nor speak, and no one k… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “My poor master,” she said, “can neither eat nor speak, and no one knows what his distemper is.” Who acts: Morgiana, one, distemper, Cassim. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Forty Thieves, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Forty Thieves, sentence 61

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“My poor master,” she said, “can neither eat nor speak, and no one knows what his distemper is.”

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**Who acts:** Morgiana, one, distemper, Cassim · **What happens:** say, eat, speak, know, be, distemper · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Forty Thieves. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Morgiana, one, distemper, Cassim), 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:pg503:34:61
# text = “My poor master,” she said, “can neither eat nor speak, and no one knows what his distemper is.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	My	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
3	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	master	master	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	neither	neither	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	ccomp	_	_
14	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	15	cc	_	_
15	speak	speak	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
18	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	19	det	_	_
19	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nsubj	_	_
20	knows	know	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
21	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	20	ccomp	_	_
22	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	23	nmod:poss	_	_
23	distemper	distemper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nsubj	_	_
24	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	21	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	20	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	20	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Morgiana |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **eat** *in a quote* | can |  |  |  |  |  | neither *property* | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **speak** *speech: other* *in a quote* | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **know** *in a quote* | present | no one |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 5 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | Cassim's distemper |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 6 | **distemper** *in a quote* |  | Cassim |  |  |  |  |  | nom distemper «state transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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