---
title: The Emperor of Blefuscu answered with many civil excuses. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The Emperor of Blefuscu answered with many civil excuses. Who acts: Emperor. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Chapter V, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Chapter V, sentence 6

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The Emperor of Blefuscu answered with many civil excuses.

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**Who acts:** Emperor · **What happens:** answer

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Chapter V. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Emperor), 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:pg503:47:6
# text = The Emperor of Blefuscu answered with many civil excuses.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Emperor	Emperor	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	Blefuscu	Blefuscu	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
5	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	with	with	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
8	civil	civil	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	excuses	excuse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	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 | the Emperor of Blefuscu |  |  |  |  | with many civil excuses | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=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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