---
title: The guests talked softly, but their speech was strange to Elsa, and… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The guests talked softly, but their speech was strange to Elsa, and she understood nothing of what was said. Who acts: guests, speech, Elsa, eyes. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Tale of the Tontlawald, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, A Tale of the Tontlawald, sentence 75

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The guests talked softly, but their speech was strange to Elsa, and she understood nothing of what was said.

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**Who acts:** guests, speech, Elsa, eyes · **What happens:** talk, be, understand, say, speak · **To what, where:** Elsa, nothing · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Tale of the Tontlawald. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (guests, speech, Elsa, eyes), 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:pg641:2:75
# text = The guests talked softly, but their speech was strange to Elsa, and she understood nothing of what was said.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	guests	guest	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	talked	talk	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	softly	softly	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
7	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	speech	speech	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	strange	strange	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	parataxis	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	Elsa	Elsa	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
15	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	understood	understand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
17	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	16	obj	_	_
18	of	of	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	17	nmod	_	_
20	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	aux:pass	_	_
21	said	say	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	19	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **talk** | past | the guests |  |  |  |  | softly *property* | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | past | eyes's speech |  | Elsa |  |  | strange *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **understand** | past | Elsa | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer nothing=Stimulus |
| 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | past · passive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S» |
| 5 | **speak** |  | eyes *= eye* |  |  |  |  |  | nom speech «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .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.

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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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