---
title: Very soon she returned, and laid the sack down before him. — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Very soon she returned, and laid the sack down before him. Who acts: troop. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 19, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 19, sentence 56

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Very soon she returned, and laid the sack down before him.

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**Who acts:** troop · **What happens:** return, lay down · **To what, where:** sack

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 19. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (troop), 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:pg3027:19:56
# text = Very soon she returned, and laid the sack down before him.
1	Very	very	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
2	soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	4	advmod	_	_
3	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	returned	return	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	laid	lay	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	sack	sack	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	down	down	ADP	RP	_	7	compound:prt	_	_
11	before	before	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **return** | past | troop |  |  |  |  | soon *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **lay down** | past | troop *not said here* | the sack |  |  | before greyhound |  | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent sack=Theme before he=Destination |

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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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