---
title: ‘Never mind,’ said the emperor, whose anger had dropped before the s… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Never mind,’ said the emperor, whose anger had dropped before the silvery tones of the boy’s voice. Who acts: anger. 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/pg641/35/119/)

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Boys With the Golden Stars, sentence 119

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‘Never mind,’ said the emperor, whose anger had dropped before the silvery tones of the boy’s voice.

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**Who acts:** anger · **What happens:** not mind, say, drop, intonate · **To what, where:** emperor, silvery tones, voice · **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 (anger), 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:pg641:35:119
# text = ‘Never mind,’ said the emperor, whose anger had dropped before the silvery tones of the boy’s voice.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	3	advmod	_	_
3	mind	mind	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	emperor	emperor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	whose	whose	PRON	WP$	Poss=Yes|PronType=Rel	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	anger	anger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
12	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	dropped	drop	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	8	acl:relcl	_	_
14	before	before	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
16	silvery	silvery	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	tones	tone	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obl	_	_
18	of	of	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	’s	's	PART	POS	_	20	case	_	_
22	voice	voice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **mind** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn care-88.1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the emperor |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **drop** | past · perfect | anger |  |  | the silvery tones of the boy's voice |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V PP.trajectory»: agent=Theme before tone=Trajectory |
| 4 | **intonate** |  |  | the boy's voice |  |  |  |  | nom tone «communication transitive»: of=patient |

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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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