---
title: And he cried aloud, ‘What am I to say to my father? — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And he cried aloud, ‘What am I to say to my father? Who acts: lad, I. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People, 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/pg641/29/20/)

<!-- 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 Nunda, Eater of People](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/29/) / 20

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Nunda, Eater of People, sentence 20

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
And he cried aloud, ‘What am I to say to my father?

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** lad, I · **What happens:** cry, say · **To what, where:** father · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lad, I), 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:pg641:29:20
# text = And he cried aloud, ‘What am I to say to my father?
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	aloud	aloud	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
6	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	11	obj	_	_
8	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
12	to	to	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | lad |  |  |  |  | aloud *property* | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | I |  | my father |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent what=Topic to father=Recipient |

<!-- .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 19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/29/19/)
- next →: [sentence 21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/29/21/)
- ↑ back to [The Nunda, Eater of People](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/29/)