---
title: ‘You useless ne’er-do-weel!’ exclaimed his mother in a great passion. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘You useless ne’er-do-weel!’ exclaimed his mother in a great passion. Who acts: You, useless ne’er do weel. 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/pg640/33/37/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Magic Ring, sentence 37

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‘You useless ne’er-do-weel!’ exclaimed his mother in a great passion.

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**Who acts:** You, useless ne’er do weel · **What happens:** weel, exclaim · **To what, where:** mother, great passion

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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 (You, useless ne’er do weel), 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:pg640:33:37
# text = ‘You useless ne’er-do-weel!’ exclaimed his mother in a great passion.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
3	useless	useless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
4	ne’er	ne'er	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	do	do	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	weel	weel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
11	exclaimed	exclaim	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
16	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	passion	passion	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **weel** |  | You |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **exclaim** *speech: express* | past | useless ne’er do weel | weel's mother |  | a great passion |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent mother=Topic |

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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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