---
title: This council always told the king the exact truth. — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: This council always told the king the exact truth. Who acts: council. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2435/4/42/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Crimson Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2435/) / [The Crimson Fairy Book, part 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2435/4/) / 42

# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 4, sentence 42

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
This council always told the king the exact truth.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** council · **What happens:** tell · **To what, where:** exact truth, king · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, 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 (council), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg2435:4:42
# text = This council always told the king the exact truth.
1	This	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	2	det	_	_
2	council	council	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	4	advmod	_	_
4	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	exact	exact	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	truth	truth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | this council | the exact truth | the king |  |  | always *property* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent king=Recipient truth=Topic |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 41](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2435/4/41/)
- next →: [sentence 43](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2435/4/43/)
- ↑ back to [The Crimson Fairy Book, part 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2435/4/)