---
title: ‘Were they of noble birth, then?’ asked the bit of bottle-glass. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Were they of noble birth, then?’ asked the bit of bottle-glass. Who acts: Fingers. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Story About a Darning-needle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, A Story About a Darning-needle, sentence 49

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‘Were they of noble birth, then?’ asked the bit of bottle-glass.

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**Who acts:** Fingers · **What happens:** be, ask · **To what, where:** Fingers, bit

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Story About a Darning-needle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Fingers), 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:pg640:51:49
# text = ‘Were they of noble birth, then?’ asked the bit of bottle-glass.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	noble	noble	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	birth	birth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
8	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
11	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	bit	bit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
15	bottle	bottle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	glass	glass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past |  | Fingers *= finger* |  |  | then | of noble birth | tree rules |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | Fingers *= finger* | the bit of bottle glass |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent bit=Recipient |

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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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