---
title: Now the poor old woman was mortally afraid and, in a trembling voice… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Now the poor old woman was mortally afraid and, in a trembling voice she asked: Who acts: poor old woman, woman. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Ring, 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/pg640/33/113/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Magic Ring, sentence 113

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Now the poor old woman was mortally afraid and, in a trembling voice she asked:

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**Who acts:** poor old woman, woman · **What happens:** be, ask · **To what, where:** trembling voice

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Ring. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor old woman, woman), 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:pg640:33:113
# text = Now the poor old woman was mortally afraid and, in a trembling voice she asked:
1	Now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	8	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
3	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
4	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
6	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
7	mortally	mortally	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	afraid	afraid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	trembling	trembling	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	_
14	voice	voice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	conj	_	_
15	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the poor old woman |  |  |  | now | afraid, mortally *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | woman | a trembling voice *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent voice=Recipient |

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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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