---
title: “How hungry we are!” they said. — The Happy Prince, and Other Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “How hungry we are!” they said. Who acts: we, boys. A sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg902/2/17/)

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# The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 2, sentence 17

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“How hungry we are!” they said.

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**Who acts:** we, boys · **What happens:** be, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (we, boys), 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:pg902:2:17
# text = “How hungry we are!” they said.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
3	hungry	hungry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	ccomp	_	_
4	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
5	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** *in a quote* | present | we |  |  |  |  | hungry *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: express* | past | boys *= boy* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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 Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Project Gutenberg book 902 (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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