---
title: Then the little sister cried and said, ‘Can you not be freed?’ — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Then the little sister cried and said, ‘Can you not be freed?’ Who acts: little sister. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Six Swans, 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/pg640/4/43/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Six Swans, sentence 43

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Then the little sister cried and said, ‘Can you not be freed?’

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**Who acts:** little sister · **What happens:** cry, say, not free · **To what, where:** you · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Six Swans. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (little sister), 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:pg640:4:43
# text = Then the little sister cried and said, ‘Can you not be freed?’
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	sister	sister	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
9	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	Can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
11	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj:pass	_	_
12	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
13	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	aux:pass	_	_
14	freed	free	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | the little sister |  |  |  | then |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the little sister *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **not** **free** | can · passive |  | you |  |  |  |  | vn free-10.6.3-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: subject=Source |

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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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