---
title: ‘To tell the master the gazelle is ill,’ said she. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘To tell the master the gazelle is ill,’ said she. Who acts: gazelle, woman. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of a Gazelle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/15/207/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Violet Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/) / [The Story of a Gazelle](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/15/) / 207

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Story of a Gazelle, sentence 207

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘To tell the master the gazelle is ill,’ said she.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** gazelle, woman · **What happens:** tell, be, say · **To what, where:** master · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of a Gazelle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (gazelle, woman), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg641:15:207
# text = ‘To tell the master the gazelle is ill,’ said she.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	To	to	PART	TO	_	3	mark	_	_
3	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	ccomp	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	master	master	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	gazelle	gazelle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
9	ill	ill	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive |  | the master |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent master=Recipient |
| 2 | **is** | present | the gazelle | the master *not said here* |  |  |  | ill *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | woman |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 206](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/15/206/)
- next →: [sentence 208](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/15/208/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of a Gazelle](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/15/)