---
title: 'Hold the cord while I look at him,' answered the hedgehog. — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'Hold the cord while I look at him,' answered the hedgehog. Who acts: you, I. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 18, 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/pg3027/18/41/)

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 18, sentence 41

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'Hold the cord while I look at him,' answered the hedgehog.

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**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** hold, look, answer · **To what, where:** cord, hedgehog

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 18. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, I), 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:pg3027:18:41
# text = 'Hold the cord while I look at him,' answered the hedgehog.
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Hold	hold	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	cord	cord	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	while	while	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
6	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	look	look	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
8	at	at	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	_
12	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	hedgehog	hedgehog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hold** | imperative | you *not said here* | the cord |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent cord=Theme |
| 2 | **look** | present | I |  |  |  |  | at greyhound | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at he=Theme |
| 3 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | you *not said here* |  | the hedgehog |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent hedgehog=Eventuality |

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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 Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (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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