---
title: ‘Scarcely alive--almost starved to death,’ answered Martin in a weak… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Scarcely alive--almost starved to death,’ answered Martin in a weak voice. 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/pg640/33/157/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Magic Ring, sentence 157

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‘Scarcely alive--almost starved to death,’ answered Martin in a weak voice.

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**What happens:** starve, answer · **To what, where:** Martin, weak 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: 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:pg640:33:157
# text = ‘Scarcely alive--almost starved to death,’ answered Martin in a weak voice.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Scarcely	scarcely	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	alive	alive	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	almost	almost	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	starved	starve	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	conj	_	_
7	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
11	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
12	Martin	Martin	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	weak	weak	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	voice	voice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **starve** | participle |  |  |  |  |  | to death; almost *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past |  |  | Martin | a weak voice |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent martin=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 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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