---
title: But her mother refused to let her go, saying: — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But her mother refused to let her go, saying: Who acts: mother, first. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Dwarfs, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Three Dwarfs, part 1, sentence 44

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But her mother refused to let her go, saying:

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**Who acts:** mother, first · **What happens:** refuse, not let, go, say · **To what, where:** first · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Dwarfs, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother, first), 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:pg540:37:44
# text = But her mother refused to let her go, saying:
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	refused	refuse	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	let	let	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	_
8	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	saying	say	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **refuse** | past | first's mother |  |  |  |  |  | vn reject-77.2 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **let** | to-infinitive | first's mother *not said here* | first |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **go** | infinitive | first *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | gerund | first *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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