---
title: ‘Perhaps it was he that sang to me so prettily in the summer,’ she t… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Perhaps it was he that sang to me so prettily in the summer,’ she thought. Who acts: feather, THUMBELINA. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch in the Stone Boat(31), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Witch in the Stone Boat(31), sentence 165

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‘Perhaps it was he that sang to me so prettily in the summer,’ she thought.

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**Who acts:** feather, THUMBELINA · **What happens:** be, think · **To what, where:** me

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch in the Stone Boat(31). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (feather, THUMBELINA), 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:pg640:47:165
# text = ‘Perhaps it was he that sang to me so prettily in the summer,’ she thought.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Perhaps	perhaps	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	nsubj	_	_
7	sang	sing	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	obl	_	_
10	so	so	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	prettily	prettily	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	summer	summer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
17	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
18	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | feather |  | me |  | summer | perhaps, prettily, sing *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* | past | THUMBELINA |  |  |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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