---
title: But the king answered: ‘It is only a lamb, why should it not be free?’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the king answered: ‘It is only a lamb, why should it not be free?’ Who acts: king, joy. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Princess Who Was Hidden Underground, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Princess Who Was Hidden Underground, sentence 21

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But the king answered: ‘It is only a lamb, why should it not be free?’

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**Who acts:** king, joy · **What happens:** answer, be, not be · **To what, where:** lamb

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Princess Who Was Hidden Underground. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (king, joy), 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:pg641:37:21
# text = But the king answered: ‘It is only a lamb, why should it not be free?’
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	4	punct	_	_
6	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
9	only	only	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	lamb	lamb	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
13	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	18	advmod	_	_
14	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
16	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	18	advmod	_	_
17	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	cop	_	_
18	free	free	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | the king |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** | present | joy | a lamb |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **not** **is** | should | joy |  |  |  |  | free *property* | 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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