---
title: But her father only shook his head sadly. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But her father only shook his head sadly. Who acts: father. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/38/32/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Violet Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/) / [The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy, pa…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/38/) / 32

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy, part 1, sentence 32

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But her father only shook his head sadly.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** father · **What happens:** shake · **To what, where:** head

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (father), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg641:38:32
# text = But her father only shook his head sadly.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	only	only	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	shook	shake	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	sadly	sadly	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **shake** | past | girl's father | father's head |  |  |  | sadly *property* | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V NP together»: agent=Agent head=Patient |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 31](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/38/31/)
- next →: [sentence 33](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/38/33/)
- ↑ back to [The Girl Who Pretended to Be a Boy, part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/38/)