---
title: What devil taught thee to speak such strange French? — Stories of Charlemagne and the twelve Peers of F… · tree and pragmatics
description: What devil taught thee to speak such strange French? Who acts: devil, thee. A sentence of «Stories of Charlemagne and the twelve Peers of France» by Alfred John Church, The Coming of Roland, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Stories of Charlemagne and the twelve Peers of France, The Coming of Roland, sentence 49

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What devil taught thee to speak such strange French?

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**Who acts:** devil, thee · **What happens:** teach, speak · **To what, where:** thee, such strange French · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Stories of Charlemagne and the twelve Peers of France» by Alfred John Church, The Coming of Roland. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (devil, thee), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg75339:6:49
# text = What devil taught thee to speak such strange French?
1	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	2	det	_	_
2	devil	devil	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	taught	teach	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	thee	thou	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=2|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	3	obj	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	speak	speak	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
7	such	such	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
8	strange	strange	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	French	French	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **teach** *speech: other* | past | what devil | thee |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent thou=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **speak** *speech: other* | to-infinitive | thee *not said here* | such strange French |  |  |  |  | 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:** «Stories of Charlemagne and the twelve Peers of France» by Alfred John Church, Project Gutenberg book 75339 (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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