---
title: At last the eldest said, ‘Be quick, my sisters, our partners will be… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: At last the eldest said, ‘Be quick, my sisters, our partners will be impatient.’ Who acts: partners. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, sentence 56

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At last the eldest said, ‘Be quick, my sisters, our partners will be impatient.’

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**Who acts:** partners · **What happens:** say, be · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Dancing Princesses. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (partners), 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:pg540:2:56
# text = At last the eldest said, ‘Be quick, my sisters, our partners will be impatient.’
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	eldest	eld	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	5	amod	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	Be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	cop	_	_
9	quick	quick	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	sisters	sister	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
14	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	partners	partner	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	nsubj	_	_
16	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
17	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	cop	_	_
18	impatient	impatient	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | my sisters *obl*; quick *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **is** | future | our partners |  |  |  |  | impatient *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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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