---
title: ‘See,’ said the wife, ‘isn’t this nice?’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘See,’ said the wife, ‘isn’t this nice?’ Who acts: wife. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife, sentence 34

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‘See,’ said the wife, ‘isn’t this nice?’

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**Who acts:** wife · **What happens:** see, say, not be · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wife), 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:pg7277:54:34
# text = ‘See,’ said the wife, ‘isn’t this nice?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	See	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	‘	‘	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
12	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	13	nsubj	_	_
13	nice	nice	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **not** **is** | present | the wife and ‘ |  |  |  |  | nice *property* | tree rules |

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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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