---
title: ‘They are our masters,’ answered the yard-dog. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘They are our masters,’ answered the yard-dog. Who acts: Lovers, masters. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 5, 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/pg5615/5/118/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 5, sentence 118

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‘They are our masters,’ answered the yard-dog.

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**Who acts:** Lovers, masters · **What happens:** be, answer · **To what, where:** masters, yard dog

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Lovers, masters), 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:pg5615:5:118
# text = ‘They are our masters,’ answered the yard-dog.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	masters	master	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
10	yard	yard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | Lovers *= lover* | our masters |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | our masters |  | the yard dog |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent dog=Eventuality |

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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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