---
title: But the sultan only shook his head, and said sadly, ‘What is that to… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the sultan only shook his head, and said sadly, ‘What is that to me? Who acts: sultan, that. 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/pg641/29/74/)

<!-- 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/) / 74

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Nunda, Eater of People, sentence 74

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But the sultan only shook his head, and said sadly, ‘What is that to me?

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** sultan, that · **What happens:** shake, say, be · **To what, where:** head, me · **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 (sultan, that), 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:pg641:29:74
# text = But the sultan only shook his head, and said sadly, ‘What is that to me?
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	sultan	sultan	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	only	only	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	shook	shake	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
11	sadly	sadly	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	10	ccomp	_	_
15	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
16	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	14	nsubj	_	_
17	to	to	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **shake** | past | the sultan | sultan's head |  |  |  |  | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V NP together»: agent=Agent head=Patient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the sultan *not said here* |  |  |  |  | sadly *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** | present | that |  | me |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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 73](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/29/73/)
- next →: [sentence 75](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/29/75/)
- ↑ back to [The Nunda, Eater of People](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/29/)