---
title: ‘Indeed I am, dear little mother,’ answered the daughter. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Indeed I am, dear little mother,’ answered the daughter. Who acts: I, dear little mother. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Birch, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/14/139/)

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Wonderful Birch, sentence 139

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‘Indeed I am, dear little mother,’ answered the daughter.

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**Who acts:** I, dear little mother · **What happens:** be, answer · **To what, where:** dear little mother, daughter

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Birch. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, dear little mother), 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:pg540:14:139
# text = ‘Indeed I am, dear little mother,’ answered the daughter.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Indeed	indeed	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
4	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
7	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
11	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	daughter	daughter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | I | dear little mother |  |  |  | indeed *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | dear little mother |  | the daughter |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent daughter=Eventuality |

<!-- .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.

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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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