---
title: "Why, 'tis a very wonderful affair," answered one of his new compani… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "Why, 'tis a very wonderful affair," answered one of his new companions. " Who acts: wonderful affair. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Dragon's Teeth., part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Dragon's Teeth., part 3, sentence 83

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"Why, 'tis a very wonderful affair," answered one of his new companions. "

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**Who acts:** wonderful affair · **What happens:** answer · **To what, where:** tis

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Dragon's Teeth., part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wonderful affair), 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:pg976:12:83
# text = "Why, 'tis a very wonderful affair," answered one of his new companions. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	12	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
4	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	tis	tis	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
7	very	very	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	wonderful	wonderful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	affair	affair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
12	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	12	obj	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
15	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
16	new	new	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	companions	companion	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
19	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | a wonderful affair | tis |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent one=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:** «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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