---
title: ‘I have nine little children,’ cried the fish. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I have nine little children,’ cried the fish. Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Watch, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Enchanted Watch, sentence 88

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‘I have nine little children,’ cried the fish.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** have, cry · **To what, where:** nine little children, fish

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Watch. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg7277:8:88
# text = ‘I have nine little children,’ cried the fish.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	parataxis	_	_
4	nine	nine	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	6	nummod	_	_
5	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
9	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | present | I | nine little children |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Patient |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | past |  | the fish |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fish=Topic |

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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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