---
title: Without seeming to have noticed anything, he said, in a confidential… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Without seeming to have noticed anything, he said, in a confidential way: Who acts: King. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Yellow Dwarf, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/6/73/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Blue Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/) / [The Yellow Dwarf, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/6/) / 73

# The Blue Fairy Book, The Yellow Dwarf, part 2, sentence 73

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Without seeming to have noticed anything, he said, in a confidential way:

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** King · **What happens:** seem, notice, say · **To what, where:** anything · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Yellow Dwarf, 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 (King), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg503:6:73
# text = Without seeming to have noticed anything, he said, in a confidential way:
1	Without	without	SCONJ	IN	_	2	mark	_	_
2	seeming	seem	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	9	advcl	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
4	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	aux	_	_
5	noticed	notice	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	2	xcomp	_	_
6	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	confidential	confidential	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **seem** | gerund | King *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme clause=Attribute |
| 2 | **notice** | to-infinitive · perfect | King *not said here* | anything |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer anything=Stimulus |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | King |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 72](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/6/72/)
- next →: [sentence 74](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/6/74/)
- ↑ back to [The Yellow Dwarf, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/6/)