---
title: "It matters little now," answered Telephassa, and there was a smile… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "It matters little now," answered Telephassa, and there was a smile upon her face. " Who acts: It, Telephassa, smile. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Dragon's Teeth., 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/pg976/11/109/)

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Dragon's Teeth., part 2, sentence 109

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"It matters little now," answered Telephassa, and there was a smile upon her face. "

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**Who acts:** It, Telephassa, smile · **What happens:** matter, answer, be · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Dragon's Teeth., 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 (It, Telephassa, smile), 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:pg976:11:109
# text = "It matters little now," answered Telephassa, and there was a smile upon her face. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	matters	matter	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	little	little	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	5	advmod	_	_
5	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	_
8	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
9	Telephassa	Telephassa	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
12	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	13	expl	_	_
13	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	smile	smile	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
16	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	face	face	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
20	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **matter** *in a quote* | present | It |  |  |  | now |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | Telephassa |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **be** | past | a smile upon smile's face |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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:** «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Project Gutenberg book 976 (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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