---
title: The miller replied, ‘Why not? — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The miller replied, ‘Why not? A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Donkey Cabbage, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Donkey Cabbage, part 1, sentence 102

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The miller replied, ‘Why not?

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**What happens:** reply · **To what, where:** miller

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Donkey Cabbage, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg640:10:102
# text = The miller replied, ‘Why not?
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	miller	miller	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
3	replied	reply	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
5	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	0	root	_	_
7	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reply** *speech: assert* | participle |  | the miller *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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