---
title: ‘Wait a little, wait a little,’ she replied. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Wait a little, wait a little,’ she replied. Who acts: you, woman. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Vivien and the Princess Placida, 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/pg7277/36/38/)

<!-- 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/) / [Prince Vivien and the Princess Placida…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/36/) / 38

# The Green Fairy Book, Prince Vivien and the Princess Placida, part 1, sentence 38

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Wait a little, wait a little,’ she replied.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you, woman · **What happens:** wait, reply · **To what, where:** little

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Vivien and the Princess Placida, 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 (you, 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:pg7277:36:38
# text = ‘Wait a little, wait a little,’ she replied.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Wait	wait	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	wait	wait	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wait** | imperative | you *not said here* | a little |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **wait** | infinitive | you *not said here* | a little |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | woman |  |  |  |  |  | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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 37](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/36/37/)
- next →: [sentence 39](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/36/39/)
- ↑ back to [Prince Vivien and the Princess Placida, part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/36/)