---
title: ‘A messenger,’ answered the Hazel-nut child. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘A messenger,’ answered the Hazel-nut child. Who acts: messenger. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Hazel-nut Child (29), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Hazel-nut Child (29), sentence 9

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‘A messenger,’ answered the Hazel-nut child.

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**Who acts:** messenger · **What happens:** answer · **To what, where:** nut child

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Hazel-nut Child (29). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (messenger), 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:pg640:40:9
# text = ‘A messenger,’ answered the Hazel-nut child.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	messenger	messenger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
8	Hazel	hazel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	nut	nut	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
11	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | a messenger |  | the nut child |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent child=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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