---
title: ‘Of noble birth!’ said the Darning-needle; ‘no indeed, but proud! — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Of noble birth!’ said the Darning-needle; ‘no indeed, but proud! Who acts: noble birth. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/51/50/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, A Story About a Darning-needle, sentence 50

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‘Of noble birth!’ said the Darning-needle; ‘no indeed, but proud!

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**Who acts:** noble birth · **What happens:** say · **To what, where:** Darning needle · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (noble birth), 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:pg640:51:50
# text = ‘Of noble birth!’ said the Darning-needle; ‘no indeed, but proud!
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Of	of	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	noble	noble	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	birth	birth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
9	Darning	darning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	needle	needle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	15	punct	_	_
13	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	15	det	_	_
15	indeed	indeed	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
17	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
18	proud	proud	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	parataxis	_	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 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | noble birth | the Darning needle |  |  |  | indeed *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent needle=Topic |

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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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