---
title: ‘Give me news of my father,’ he replied, rather nervously. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Give me news of my father,’ he replied, rather nervously. Who acts: Petru. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 2, 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/pg641/20/120/)

<!-- 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 Fairy of the Dawn, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/20/) / 120

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 2, sentence 120

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Give me news of my father,’ he replied, rather nervously.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Petru · **What happens:** give, reply · **To what, where:** news, me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Petru), 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:pg641:20:120
# text = ‘Give me news of my father,’ he replied, rather nervously.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Give	give	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	_
4	news	news	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	rather	rather	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
14	nervously	nervously	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give** | infinitive |  | news of my father | me |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient news=Theme |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | Petru |  |  |  |  | nervously *property* | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V how S»: 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 119](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/20/119/)
- next →: [sentence 121](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/20/121/)
- ↑ back to [The Fairy of the Dawn, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/20/)