---
title: ‘But where are my twelve brothers?’ said the girl. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘But where are my twelve brothers?’ said the girl. Who acts: twelve brothers, girl. 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/pg540/41/33/)

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Twelve Brothers, sentence 33

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‘But where are my twelve brothers?’ said the girl.

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**Who acts:** twelve brothers, girl · **What happens:** be, say · **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 (twelve brothers, girl), 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:pg540:41:33
# text = ‘But where are my twelve brothers?’ said the girl.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
3	where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	10	advmod	_	_
4	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
5	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
6	twelve	twelve	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	7	nummod	_	_
7	brothers	brother	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | my twelve brothers |  |  |  |  | where *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the girl |  |  |  |  |  | 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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