---
title: Dear, dear, what nonsense people do talk sometimes.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Dear, dear, what nonsense people do talk sometimes.’ Who acts: nonsense people. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water., sentence 36

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Dear, dear, what nonsense people do talk sometimes.’

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**Who acts:** nonsense people · **What happens:** talk

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (nonsense people), 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:pg641:16:36
# text = Dear, dear, what nonsense people do talk sometimes.’
1	Dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
3	dear	dear	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	1	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	9	obj	_	_
6	nonsense	nonsense	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	_
7	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
8	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	talk	talk	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
10	sometimes	sometimes	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	9	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **talk** | present · do-support | nonsense people |  |  |  |  | sometimes *property* | vn compel-59.1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent what=Patient |

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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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