---
title: They replied that they didn’t care a bit what he thought. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They replied that they didn’t care a bit what he thought. Who acts: men, Prince. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Ring (30), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, Prince Ring (30), sentence 54

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They replied that they didn’t care a bit what he thought.

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**Who acts:** men, Prince · **What happens:** reply, not care, think · **To what, where:** bit · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Ring (30). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (men, Prince), 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:pg640:42:54
# text = They replied that they didn’t care a bit what he thought.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
5	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
7	care	care	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	ccomp	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	bit	bit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl:unmarked	_	_
10	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	12	obj	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | men *= man* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **not** **care** | past · do-support | men *= man* | a bit |  |  |  |  | vn care-88.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **think** *speech: other* | past | Prince | a bit |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot what=Theme |

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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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