---
title: ‘And very ill the gift of eloquence becomes a woman,’ replied Sylvia… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘And very ill the gift of eloquence becomes a woman,’ replied Sylvia, with an air of conviction. Who acts: gift, woman. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Fairy Gifts, 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/pg7277/10/26/)

<!-- 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 Green Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/) / [Fairy Gifts](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/10/) / 26

# The Green Fairy Book, Fairy Gifts, sentence 26

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘And very ill the gift of eloquence becomes a woman,’ replied Sylvia, with an air of conviction.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** gift, woman · **What happens:** become, reply, gift · **To what, where:** eloquence

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Fairy Gifts. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (gift, woman), 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:pg7277:10:26
# text = ‘And very ill the gift of eloquence becomes a woman,’ replied Sylvia, with an air of conviction.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
3	very	very	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	ill	ill	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	advcl	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	gift	gift	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	eloquence	eloquence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
9	becomes	become	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
14	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	ccomp	_	_
15	Sylvia	Sylvia	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
17	with	with	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	appos	_	_
20	of	of	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	conviction	conviction	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **become** | present | the gift of eloquence |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | a woman |  |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **gift** |  |  | eloquence |  |  |  |  | nom gift «possession transitive»: of=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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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 25](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/10/25/)
- next →: [sentence 27](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/10/27/)
- ↑ back to [Fairy Gifts](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/10/)