---
title: ‘Pardon me, your excellency, but what sort of treasure was it suppos… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Pardon me, your excellency, but what sort of treasure was it supposed to have been? Who acts: you. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/16/91/)

<!-- 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/) / [How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/16/) / 91

# The Violet Fairy Book, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water., sentence 91

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Pardon me, your excellency, but what sort of treasure was it supposed to have been?

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** pardon, suppose, have, sort · **To what, where:** me, sort, treasure

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (you), 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:pg641:16:91
# text = ‘Pardon me, your excellency, but what sort of treasure was it supposed to have been?
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Pardon	pardon	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	excellency	excellency	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
9	what	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	10	det	_	_
10	sort	sort	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj:pass	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	treasure	treasure	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	_
13	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux:pass	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj:pass	_	_
15	supposed	suppose	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	advcl	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	xcomp	_	_
18	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	17	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pardon** | imperative | you *not said here* | me |  |  |  | your excellency *obl* | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Theme |
| 2 | **suppose** | past · passive |  | what sort of treasure |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V NP ADJ»: subject=Attribute clause=Theme |
| 3 | **have** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **sort** |  |  | treasure |  |  |  |  | nom sort «cognition transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .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 90](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/16/90/)
- next →: [sentence 92](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/16/92/)
- ↑ back to [How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/16/)