---
title: Steal only the hen which has the feather missing from her tail, and… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Steal only the hen which has the feather missing from her tail, and leave the others alone.” Who acts: you, hen, feather. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 23, 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/pg3282/23/19/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 23, sentence 19

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Steal only the hen which has the feather missing from her tail, and leave the others alone.”

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**Who acts:** you, hen, feather · **What happens:** steal, have, miss, leave · **To what, where:** hen, feather, tail, others

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 23. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, hen, feather), 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:pg3282:23:19
# text = Steal only the hen which has the feather missing from her tail, and leave the others alone.”
1	Steal	steal	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	only	only	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	hen	hen	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
5	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	6	nsubj	_	_
6	has	have	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	acl:relcl	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	feather	feather	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	missing	miss	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	acl	_	_
10	from	from	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	leave	leave	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	parataxis	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	others	other	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obj	_	_
18	alone	alone	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **steal** | imperative | you *not said here* | the hen |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **have** | present | the hen | the feather |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent feather=Patient |
| 3 | **miss** | gerund | the feather *not said here* |  |  | feather's tail |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V that S»: agent=Experiencer |
| 4 | **leave** | infinitive |  | the others |  |  |  | alone *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent other=Theme |

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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 Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (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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