---
title: ‘Oh, what a misfortune!’ cried the host, wringing his hands. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Oh, what a misfortune!’ cried the host, wringing his hands. Who acts: misfortune. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus, 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/pg640/41/180/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus, sentence 180

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‘Oh, what a misfortune!’ cried the host, wringing his hands.

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**Who acts:** misfortune · **What happens:** misfortune, cry, wring · **To what, where:** host, hands

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (misfortune), 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:pg640:41:180
# text = ‘Oh, what a misfortune!’ cried the host, wringing his hands.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	6	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	nsubj	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	misfortune	misfortune	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
9	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	host	host	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
13	wringing	wring	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	9	advcl	_	_
14	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	hands	hand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **misfortune** |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | a misfortune | the host |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent host=Topic |
| 3 | **wring** | gerund | a misfortune *not said here* | misfortune's hands |  |  |  |  | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hand=Patient |

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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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