---
title: But the king said: “What's your pay?” — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But the king said: “What's your pay?” Who acts: king. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Nix Nought Nothing, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Nix Nought Nothing, sentence 7

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But the king said: “What's your pay?”

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**Who acts:** king · **What happens:** say, be · **To what, where:** pay · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Nix Nought Nothing. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (king), 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:pg7439:12:7
# text = But the king said: “What's your pay?”
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	4	punct	_	_
6	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
9	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	pay	pay	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | the king |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | present |  | your pay |  |  |  |  | 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:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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