---
title: Instantly the sword darted forth and cut off the heads of everyone b… — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Instantly the sword darted forth and cut off the heads of everyone but the Sultan, and then went quietly back to its scabbard. Who acts: sword. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 8, 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/pg2435/8/17/)

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 8, sentence 17

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Instantly the sword darted forth and cut off the heads of everyone but the Sultan, and then went quietly back to its scabbard.

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**Who acts:** sword · **What happens:** dart, cut off, go back · **To what, where:** heads

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sword), 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:pg2435:8:17
# text = Instantly the sword darted forth and cut off the heads of everyone but the Sultan, and then went quietly back to its scabbard.
1	Instantly	instantly	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	sword	sword	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	darted	dart	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	forth	forth	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	cut	cut	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	conj	_	_
8	off	off	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	everyone	everyone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Tot	10	nmod	_	_
13	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	Sultan	Sultan	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
18	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	19	advmod	_	_
19	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
20	quietly	quietly	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
21	back	back	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
22	to	to	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
23	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	24	nmod:poss	_	_
24	scabbard	scabbard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **dart** | past | the sword |  |  |  |  | forth, instantly *property* | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **cut off** | participle | the sword *not said here* | the heads of everyone |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Affector head=Eventuality |
| 3 | **go back** | past | the sword *not said here* |  |  |  | then | to Sultan's scabbard *result*; quietly *property* | vn convert-26.6.2 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Patient to scabbard=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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