---
title: But she said to them very politely: — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But she said to them very politely: Who acts: Delicia. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Good Mouse, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Little Good Mouse, sentence 158

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But she said to them very politely:

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**Who acts:** Delicia · **What happens:** say · **To what, where:** guards · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Good Mouse. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Delicia), 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:pg540:22:158
# text = But she said to them very politely:
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obl	_	_
6	very	very	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	politely	politely	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	3	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 | Delicia |  | guards *= guard* |  |  | politely *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to they=Recipient |

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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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