---
title: “What nonsense! just take him by the leg and throw him into the ditc… — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “What nonsense! just take him by the leg and throw him into the ditch.” Who acts: nonsense. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 26, 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/pg2435/26/19/)

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 26, sentence 19

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“What nonsense! just take him by the leg and throw him into the ditch.”

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**Who acts:** nonsense · **What happens:** take, throw · **To what, where:** coffin, ditch

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 26. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (nonsense), 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:pg2435:26:19
# text = “What nonsense! just take him by the leg and throw him into the ditch.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	obj	_	_
3	nonsense	nonsense	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
5	just	just	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	take	take	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	_
8	by	by	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	leg	leg	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	throw	throw	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
13	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	_
14	into	into	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	ditch	ditch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** *in a quote* | infinitive | nonsense |  | coffin |  |  | by the leg | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP ADVP»: agent=Instrument what=Theme he=Destination |
| 2 | **throw** *in a quote* | infinitive | nonsense *not said here* | coffin |  |  |  | into the ditch *result* | vn throw-17.1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.result»: agent=Causer he=Theme into ditch=Result |

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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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