---
title: Who can tell the despair which seized the poor maiden when she heard… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Who can tell the despair which seized the poor maiden when she heard this news! Who acts: despair, Wind. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 25, 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/pg5615/25/55/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 25, sentence 55

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Who can tell the despair which seized the poor maiden when she heard this news!

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**Who acts:** despair, Wind · **What happens:** tell, seize, hear · **To what, where:** despair, news · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 25. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (despair, Wind), 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:pg5615:25:55
# text = Who can tell the despair which seized the poor maiden when she heard this news!
1	Who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	3	nsubj	_	_
2	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	despair	despair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	7	nsubj	_	_
7	seized	seize	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	maiden	maiden	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	xcomp	_	_
11	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	13	advmod	_	_
12	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
14	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	15	det	_	_
15	news	news	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | can |  | the despair |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent despair=Recipient |
| 2 | **seize** | past | the despair |  |  |  |  | maiden *property* | vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **hear** | past | Wind | this news |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer news=Stimulus |

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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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