---
title: “Then you are quite behind the age,” said the Water-rat. — The Happy Prince, and Other Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Then you are quite behind the age,” said the Water-rat. Who acts: Water rat. 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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# The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 4, sentence 59

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“Then you are quite behind the age,” said the Water-rat.

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**Who acts:** Water rat · **What happens:** say · **To what, where:** age · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Water rat), 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:pg902:4:59
# text = “Then you are quite behind the age,” said the Water-rat.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	6	advmod	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
4	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
5	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	behind	behind	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	age	age	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
13	Water	Water	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	15	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	rat	rat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	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 | the Water rat |  |  |  | behind the age |  | 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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