---
title: And the man replied, ‘Why, I’ve merely been gathering a handful of b… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And the man replied, ‘Why, I’ve merely been gathering a handful of brushwood.’ Who acts: man, I. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 19, 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/pg5615/19/67/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 19, sentence 67

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And the man replied, ‘Why, I’ve merely been gathering a handful of brushwood.’

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**Who acts:** man, I · **What happens:** reply, gather · **To what, where:** handful

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 19. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man, I), 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:pg5615:19:67
# text = And the man replied, ‘Why, I’ve merely been gathering a handful of brushwood.’
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’ve	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
11	merely	merely	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
12	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	13	aux	_	_
13	gathering	gather	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	handful	handful	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
16	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	brushwood	brushwood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | the man |  |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **gather** | present · perfect · progressive | I | a handful of brushwood |  |  |  | merely *property* | vn deduce-97.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent handful=Theme |

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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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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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