---
title: To the queen he whispered, ‘I didn’t think you would be such a fool.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: To the queen he whispered, ‘I didn’t think you would be such a fool.’ Who acts: king, I, you. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Jesper Who Herded the Hares, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, Jesper Who Herded the Hares, sentence 154

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To the queen he whispered, ‘I didn’t think you would be such a fool.’

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**Who acts:** king, I, you · **What happens:** whisper, not think, be · **To what, where:** queen, fool · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Jesper Who Herded the Hares. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (king, I, you), 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:pg641:24:154
# text = To the queen he whispered, ‘I didn’t think you would be such a fool.’
1	To	to	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	queen	queen	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	whispered	whisper	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	think	think	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	ccomp	_	_
12	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
13	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
14	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	cop	_	_
15	such	such	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	17	det:predet	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	fool	fool	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **whisper** *speech: assert* | past | king |  | the queen |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V PP.recipient that S»: agent=Agent to queen=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **not** **think** *speech: other* | past · do-support | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** | would | you | such fool |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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