---
title: All day long she sat in her chair nodding her head and never saying… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: All day long she sat in her chair nodding her head and never saying a word. Who acts: mother, chair. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Nettle Spinner, sentence 52

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All day long she sat in her chair nodding her head and never saying a word.

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**Who acts:** mother, chair · **What happens:** sit, nod, not say · **To what, where:** chair, head, word · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother, chair), 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:pg540:42:52
# text = All day long she sat in her chair nodding her head and never saying a word.
1	All	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	2	det	_	_
2	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	2	advmod	_	_
4	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	chair	chair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
9	nodding	nod	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	acl	_	_
10	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
13	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
14	saying	say	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	conj	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | past | mother |  |  | mother's chair | day |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in chair=Location |
| 2 | **nod** | gerund | mother's chair *not said here* | mother's head |  |  |  |  | vn wink-40.3.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=Patient |
| 3 | **not** **say** *speech: assert* | gerund | mother *not said here* | a word |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent word=Topic |

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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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