---
title: When the brothers heard this they were very angry, and said: — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: When the brothers heard this they were very angry, and said: Who acts: brothers. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/41/19/)

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Twelve Brothers, sentence 19

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When the brothers heard this they were very angry, and said:

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**Who acts:** brothers · **What happens:** hear, be, say · **To what, where:** this · **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 (brothers), 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:pg540:41:19
# text = When the brothers heard this they were very angry, and said:
1	When	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	brothers	brother	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	_
5	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	4	obj	_	_
6	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
7	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
8	very	very	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	angry	angry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hear** | past | the brothers | this |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer this=Stimulus |
| 2 | **is** | past | brothers *= brother* |  |  |  |  | angry *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | 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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