---
title: They had much to tell him, but after a while he checked their merry… — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They had much to tell him, but after a while he checked their merry talk and said: Who acts: children, king. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 23, 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/pg2435/23/31/)

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 23, sentence 31

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They had much to tell him, but after a while he checked their merry talk and said:

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**Who acts:** children, king · **What happens:** have, tell, check, say, talk · **To what, where:** king, merry talk · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 23. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (children, king), 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:pg2435:23:31
# text = They had much to tell him, but after a while he checked their merry talk and said:
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	much	much	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
6	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
9	after	after	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	while	while	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	checked	check	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
14	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
15	merry	merry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	talk	talk	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
18	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	18	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | children *= child* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | children *= child* *not said here* |  | king |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent he=Recipient |
| 3 | **check** | past | king | children's merry talk |  |  | while |  | vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent talk=Theme |
| 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | children *= child* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **talk** |  | children *= child* |  |  |  |  |  | nom talk «communication intransitive»: poss=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 Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 2435 (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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