---
title: ‘There is nothing to fear,’ replied the old mother. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘There is nothing to fear,’ replied the old mother. Who acts: nothing. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Stan Bolovan, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, Stan Bolovan, sentence 157

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‘There is nothing to fear,’ replied the old mother.

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**Who acts:** nothing · **What happens:** be, fear, reply · **To what, where:** old mother · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Stan Bolovan. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (nothing), 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:pg641:13:157
# text = ‘There is nothing to fear,’ replied the old mother.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	3	expl	_	_
3	is	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	ccomp	_	_
4	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	3	nsubj	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	fear	fear	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
9	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | present | nothing |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **fear** | to-infinitive | nothing *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn marvel-31.3 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past |  | the old mother |  |  |  |  | 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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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