---
title: He said nothing, but ate up a big supper, and ordered them to stay a… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He said nothing, but ate up a big supper, and ordered them to stay all night. Who acts: voice. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Molly Whuppie, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Molly Whuppie, sentence 15

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He said nothing, but ate up a big supper, and ordered them to stay all night.

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**Who acts:** voice · **What happens:** say, eat up, order, stay · **To what, where:** nothing, big supper, man · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Molly Whuppie. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (voice), 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:pg7439:25:15
# text = He said nothing, but ate up a big supper, and ordered them to stay all night.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	ate	eat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
7	up	up	ADP	RP	_	6	compound:prt	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	supper	supper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	ordered	order	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
14	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	stay	stay	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
17	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	18	det	_	_
18	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	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 | voice | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent nothing=Topic |
| 2 | **eat up** | past | voice *not said here* | a big supper |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent supper=Patient |
| 3 | **order** | past |  |  | man |  |  |  | vn order-58.3-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent they=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 4 | **stay** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  | night |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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