---
title: One day the boy said to his mother: ‘What was my father’s business?’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: One day the boy said to his mother: ‘What was my father’s business?’ Who acts: boy. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Hassebu, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Story of Hassebu, sentence 6

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One day the boy said to his mother: ‘What was my father’s business?’

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**Who acts:** boy · **What happens:** say, be · **To what, where:** mother, business · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Hassebu. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boy), 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:pg641:30:6
# text = One day the boy said to his mother: ‘What was my father’s business?’
1	One	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	nummod	_	_
2	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	10	punct	_	_
10	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	16	nsubj	_	_
12	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
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	16	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’s	's	PART	POS	_	14	case	_	_
16	business	business	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	16	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the boy |  | child's mother |  | day |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to mother=Recipient |
| 2 | **is a** | past |  | my father's business |  |  |  |  | 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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