---
title: Turning to his brothers he said: — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Turning to his brothers he said: Who acts: fox. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Princes and Their Beasts (lithuanian Fairy Tale), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Three Princes and Their Beasts (lithuanian Fairy Tale), sentence 12

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Turning to his brothers he said:

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**Who acts:** fox · **What happens:** turn, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Princes and Their Beasts (lithuanian Fairy Tale). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fox), 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:pg641:5:12
# text = Turning to his brothers he said:
1	Turning	turn	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	6	csubj	_	_
2	to	to	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	brothers	brother	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	obl	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **turn** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  | to fox's brothers *result* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V PP.result»: agent=Theme to brother=Result |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | fox |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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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