---
title: The old woman looked sharply at the saucy boy, laughed unpleasantly,… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The old woman looked sharply at the saucy boy, laughed unpleasantly, and said: Who acts: old woman. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Dwarf Long Nose, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The History of Dwarf Long Nose, part 1, sentence 31

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The old woman looked sharply at the saucy boy, laughed unpleasantly, and said:

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**Who acts:** old woman · **What happens:** look, laugh, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Dwarf Long Nose, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old woman), 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:pg641:26:31
# text = The old woman looked sharply at the saucy boy, laughed unpleasantly, and said:
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	sharply	sharply	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
6	at	at	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	saucy	saucy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	laughed	laugh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
12	unpleasantly	unpleasantly	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **look** | past | the old woman |  |  |  |  | at the saucy boy; sharply *property* | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at boy=Theme |
| 2 | **laugh** | past | the old woman *not said here* |  |  |  |  | unpleasantly *property* | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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