---
title: The king’s heart sank when he read the letter. — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The king’s heart sank when he read the letter. Who acts: heart. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 7, 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/pg2435/7/83/)

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 7, sentence 83

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The king’s heart sank when he read the letter.

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**Who acts:** heart · **What happens:** sink, read · **To what, where:** letter

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (heart), 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:pg2435:7:83
# text = The king’s heart sank when he read the letter.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	’s	's	PART	POS	_	2	case	_	_
4	heart	heart	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	sank	sink	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	8	advmod	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	read	read	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	letter	letter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sink** | past | the king's heart |  |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **read** | past | heart | the letter |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent letter=Topic |

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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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