---
title: ‘Croak, croak, croak!’ was all that the son could say. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Croak, croak, croak!’ was all that the son could say. Who acts: son. 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 99

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‘Croak, croak, croak!’ was all that the son could say.

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**Who acts:** son · **What happens:** be

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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 (son), 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:pg640:47:99
# text = ‘Croak, croak, croak!’ was all that the son could say.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Croak	croak	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	croak	croak	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	croak	croak	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
10	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	15	det:predet	_	_
11	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
14	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | could · past | the son |  |  |  |  | say *property* | tree rules |

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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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