---
title: “What a silly question!” cried the Water-rat. — The Happy Prince, and Other Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “What a silly question!” cried the Water-rat. Who acts: silly question. A sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 4, 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/pg902/4/13/)

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# The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 4, sentence 13

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“What a silly question!” cried the Water-rat.

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**Who acts:** silly question · **What happens:** cry · **To what, where:** Water rat

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This is a sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (silly question), 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:pg902:4:13
# text = “What a silly question!” cried the Water-rat.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	5	det:predet	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	silly	silly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	question	question	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
10	Water	Water	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	rat	rat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | what silly question | the Water rat |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: 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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- ← previous: [sentence 12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg902/4/12/)
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