---
title: But his wife wouldn’t listen to his arguments, and did nothing but s… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But his wife wouldn’t listen to his arguments, and did nothing but scold and reproach him. Who acts: wife, heart. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Hansel and Grettel, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Hansel and Grettel, sentence 46

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But his wife wouldn’t listen to his arguments, and did nothing but scold and reproach him.

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**Who acts:** wife, heart · **What happens:** not listen, do, reproach, argue · **To what, where:** nothing, heart

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Hansel and Grettel. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wife, heart), 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:pg503:35:46
# text = But his wife wouldn’t listen to his arguments, and did nothing but scold and reproach him.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
4	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
6	listen	listen	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	arguments	argument	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	did	do	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	advcl	_	_
13	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	12	obj	_	_
14	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	scold	scold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	conj	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	reproach	reproach	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
18	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **listen** | would | heart's wife |  |  |  |  | to heart's arguments | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent to argument=Theme |
| 2 | **do** | past | heart's wife *not said here* | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Eventuality |
| 3 | **reproach** | infinitive | heart's wife *not said here* | heart |  |  |  |  | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Theme |
| 4 | **argue** |  | heart |  |  |  |  |  | nom argument «communication 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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