---
title: ‘It was the heron who told me,’ replied she. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘It was the heron who told me,’ replied she. Who acts: reach, heron. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 34, 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/pg5615/34/48/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 34, sentence 48

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‘It was the heron who told me,’ replied she.

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**Who acts:** reach, heron · **What happens:** be, tell, reply · **To what, where:** heron, me, Dove · **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 34. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (reach, heron), 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:pg5615:34:48
# text = ‘It was the heron who told me,’ replied she.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	heron	heron	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
6	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	7	nsubj	_	_
7	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	_
8	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
11	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | reach | the heron |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | the heron |  | me |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |
| 3 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | the heron | Dove |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent she=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 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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