---
title: So, after a great deal of persuasion, they said: — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: So, after a great deal of persuasion, they said: Who acts: fairies. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Princess Rosette, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, Princess Rosette, sentence 9

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So, after a great deal of persuasion, they said:

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**Who acts:** fairies · **What happens:** say, deal · **To what, where:** persuasion · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Princess Rosette. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fairies), 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:pg540:11:9
# text = So, after a great deal of persuasion, they said:
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	after	after	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	deal	deal	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	persuasion	persuasion	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
10	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	11	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 | fairies *= fairy* |  |  |  | after a great deal of persuasion |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **deal** |  |  | persuasion |  |  |  |  | nom deal «act transitive»: of=patient |

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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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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