---
title: The farmer said, ‘What’s the use of making a fuss? — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The farmer said, ‘What’s the use of making a fuss? Who acts: farmer, use. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Jack My Hedgehog, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, Jack My Hedgehog, sentence 6

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The farmer said, ‘What’s the use of making a fuss?

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**Who acts:** farmer, use · **What happens:** say, be, make · **To what, where:** use, fuss · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Jack My Hedgehog. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (farmer, use), 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:pg7277:48:6
# text = The farmer said, ‘What’s the use of making a fuss?
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	farmer	farmer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
5	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’s	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	use	use	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	ccomp	_	_
10	of	of	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
11	making	make	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	acl	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	fuss	fuss	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the farmer |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** | present |  | the use |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **make** | gerund | the use *not said here* | a fuss |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset fuss=Product |

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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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