---
title: At length the eldest turned to the boy and said: — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: At length the eldest turned to the boy and said: A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 12, 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/pg3454/12/58/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 12, sentence 58

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At length the eldest turned to the boy and said:

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**What happens:** turn, say · **To what, where:** length · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg3454:12:58
# text = At length the eldest turned to the boy and said:
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	length	length	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	eldest	eld	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	2	nmod	_	_
5	turned	turn	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	ccomp	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:agent	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **turn** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  | length  the eldest |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=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 Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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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