---
title: ‘Listen, sisters!’ said Anna, as they passed on. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Listen, sisters!’ said Anna, as they passed on. Who acts: Anna, sisters. 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/pg641/35/11/)

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Boys With the Golden Stars, sentence 11

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‘Listen, sisters!’ said Anna, as they passed on.

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**Who acts:** Anna, sisters · **What happens:** listen, say, pass on · **To what, where:** sisters · **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 (Anna, sisters), 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:pg641:35:11
# text = ‘Listen, sisters!’ said Anna, as they passed on.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Listen	listen	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	sisters	sister	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	Anna	Anna	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	passed	pass	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
13	on	on	ADP	RP	_	12	compound:prt	_	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 | **listen** | infinitive |  | sisters |  |  |  |  | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Anna |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **pass on** | past | sisters *= sister* |  |  |  |  |  | vn send-11.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |

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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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