---
title: ‘The walls white and I black--what a pretty contrast it makes!’ said… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘The walls white and I black--what a pretty contrast it makes!’ said the Darning-needle. Who acts: contrast. 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 74

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‘The walls white and I black--what a pretty contrast it makes!’ said the Darning-needle.

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**Who acts:** contrast · **What happens:** make, say · **To what, where:** pretty contrast, 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 (contrast), 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:pg640:51:74
# text = ‘The walls white and I black--what a pretty contrast it makes!’ said the Darning-needle.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	walls	wall	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	ccomp	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
6	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	parataxis	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	pretty	pretty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	contrast	contrast	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
13	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	makes	make	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
17	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
19	Darning	darning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	19	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	needle	needle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	17	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **make** | present | contrast | a pretty contrast *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.material V NP»: agent=Material contrast=Product |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the Darning needle |  |  |  |  | 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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