---
title: Madam!’ he cried, hardly knowing what he said. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Madam!’ he cried, hardly knowing what he said. Who acts: Prince. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Donkey Cabbage, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/12/20/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Yellow Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/) / [The Donkey Cabbage, part 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/12/) / 20

# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Donkey Cabbage, part 3, sentence 20

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Madam!’ he cried, hardly knowing what he said.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Prince · **What happens:** cry, know, say · **To what, where:** Madam · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Donkey Cabbage, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Prince), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg640:12:20
# text = Madam!’ he cried, hardly knowing what he said.
1	Madam	madam	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	hardly	hardly	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	knowing	know	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	advcl	_	_
9	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	11	obj	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | Prince | Madam |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **know** | gerund | Prince *not said here* |  |  |  |  | hardly *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Prince |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=Topic |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/12/19/)
- next →: [sentence 21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/12/21/)
- ↑ back to [The Donkey Cabbage, part 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/12/)