---
title: The girl sighed and answered, ‘My stepmother deals in black arts, an… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The girl sighed and answered, ‘My stepmother deals in black arts, and she is not very friendly to strangers.’ Who acts: girl, My. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Riddle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Riddle, sentence 8

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The girl sighed and answered, ‘My stepmother deals in black arts, and she is not very friendly to strangers.’

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**Who acts:** girl, My · **What happens:** sigh, answer, not be, deal · **To what, where:** black arts

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Riddle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (girl, My), 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:pg7277:47:8
# text = The girl sighed and answered, ‘My stepmother deals in black arts, and she is not very friendly to strangers.’
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	sighed	sigh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	My	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
9	stepmother	stepmother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	_
10	deals	deal	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	conj	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	arts	art	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
16	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
17	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	20	cop	_	_
18	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	20	advmod	_	_
19	very	very	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	friendly	friendly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	parataxis	_	_
21	to	to	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	strangers	stranger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sigh** | past | the girl |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | the girl *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **not** **is** | present | girl |  |  |  |  | to strangers; friendly *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **deal** |  | My |  |  | black arts |  |  | nom deal «act transitive»: poss=agent in=place |

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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 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.

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