---
title: What boys are they?’ said the emperor all in one breath. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: What boys are they?’ said the emperor all in one breath. Who acts: boys. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Boys With the Golden Stars, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/35/103/)

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Boys With the Golden Stars, sentence 103

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What boys are they?’ said the emperor all in one breath.

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**Who acts:** boys · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** emperor, one breath · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Boys With the Golden Stars. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boys), 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:pg641:35:103
# text = What boys are they?’ said the emperor all in one breath.
1	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	nsubj:outer	_	_
2	boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	cop	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	emperor	emperor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	all	all	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	13	nummod	_	_
13	breath	breath	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | boys |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the emperor |  | one breath |  |  | vn pronounce-29.3.1 «NP V NP PP.manner»: agent=Agent emperor=Theme in breath=Manner |

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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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