---
title: ‘We wish to speak with the emperor,’ said one of the boys. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘We wish to speak with the emperor,’ said one of the boys. Who acts: We, one. 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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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Boys With the Golden Stars, sentence 89

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‘We wish to speak with the emperor,’ said one of the boys.

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**Who acts:** We, one · **What happens:** wish, speak, say · **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 (We, one), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg641:3027`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg641:35:89
# text = ‘We wish to speak with the emperor,’ said one of the boys.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	_
2	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	wish	wish	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	ccomp	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	speak	speak	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	with	with	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	emperor	emperor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	11	nsubj	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nmod	_	_
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wish** | present | We |  |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V for NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **speak** *speech: other* *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | We *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with the emperor | vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent with emperor=Co-Agent |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | one of the boys |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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