---
title: ‘Don’t you like thin necks?’ laughed the old woman. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Don’t you like thin necks?’ laughed the old woman. Who acts: you. 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 37

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‘Don’t you like thin necks?’ laughed the old woman.

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** not do, like, laugh · **To what, where:** thin necks, old woman

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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 (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:pg641:26:37
# text = ‘Don’t you like thin necks?’ laughed the old woman.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	2	advmod	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	like	like	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
6	thin	thin	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	necks	neck	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
10	laughed	laugh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **do** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **like** | present | you | thin necks |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot neck=Theme |
| 3 | **laugh** | past |  | the old woman |  |  |  |  | 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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