---
title: She wept bitterly as she spoke, but her son comforted her and said: — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: She wept bitterly as she spoke, but her son comforted her and said: Who acts: Queen, son. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Brothers, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Twelve Brothers, sentence 11

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
She wept bitterly as she spoke, but her son comforted her and said:

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**Who acts:** Queen, son · **What happens:** weep, speak, comfort, say · **To what, where:** Queen · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Brothers. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Queen, son), 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:pg540:41:11
# text = She wept bitterly as she spoke, but her son comforted her and said:
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	wept	weep	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	bitterly	bitterly	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
4	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
5	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	spoke	speak	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
11	comforted	comfort	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
12	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **weep** | past | Queen |  |  |  |  | bitterly *property* | vn breathe-40.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **speak** *speech: other* | past | Queen |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **comfort** | past | Queen's son | Queen |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus she=Experiencer |
| 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Queen's son *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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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