---
title: ‘Yes, that is a good idea,’ answered they. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Yes, that is a good idea,’ answered they. Who acts: that, good idea. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Halfman, 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/pg641/41/87/)

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Story of Halfman, sentence 87

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‘Yes, that is a good idea,’ answered they.

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**Who acts:** that, good idea · **What happens:** be, answer · **To what, where:** good idea

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Halfman. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (that, good idea), 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:pg641:41:87
# text = ‘Yes, that is a good idea,’ answered they.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Yes	yes	INTJ	UH	Polarity=Pos	8	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	nsubj	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	idea	idea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
11	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | that | a good idea |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | a good idea |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: 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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