---
title: His Imperial Majesty spoke often to me, and I answered; but neither… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: His Imperial Majesty spoke often to me, and I answered; but neither of us could understand a word. Who acts: Imperial Majesty, I, neither. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Chapter I, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Chapter I, sentence 76

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His Imperial Majesty spoke often to me, and I answered; but neither of us could understand a word.

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**Who acts:** Imperial Majesty, I, neither · **What happens:** speak, answer, understand · **To what, where:** me, word · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Chapter I. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Imperial Majesty, I, neither), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg503:3360`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg503:43:76
# text = His Imperial Majesty spoke often to me, and I answered; but neither of us could understand a word.
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
2	Imperial	imperial	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	Majesty	majesty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	spoke	speak	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	often	often	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	obl	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
12	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	18	punct	_	_
13	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
14	neither	neither	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	18	nsubj	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	14	nmod	_	_
17	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
18	understand	understand	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	_
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* | past | Emperor's Imperial Majesty |  | me |  |  | often *property* | vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent to i=Co-Agent |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **understand** | could | neither | a word |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer word=Stimulus |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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