---
title: How shall I answer him? — Legends of the conquest of Spain · tree and pragmatics
description: How shall I answer him? Who acts: I. A sentence of «Legends of the conquest of Spain» by Washington Irving, Expedition of Abdalasis Against Seville and the “land of Tadmir.”, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Legends of the conquest of Spain, Expedition of Abdalasis Against Seville and the “land of Tadmir.”, sentence 7

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How shall I answer him?

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** answer · **To what, where:** pause

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This is a sentence of «Legends of the conquest of Spain» by Washington Irving, Expedition of Abdalasis Against Seville and the “land of Tadmir.”. 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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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg77685:31:7
# text = How shall I answer him?
1	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	4	advmod	_	_
2	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	answer	answer	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | shall | I |  | pause |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent he=Eventuality |

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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:** «Legends of the conquest of Spain» by Washington Irving, Project Gutenberg book 77685 (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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