---
title: But the poor fat officer could do nothing but squat on his knees wit… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the poor fat officer could do nothing but squat on his knees with his hands together, gasping. Who acts: poor fat officer. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 16, 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/pg3454/16/50/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 16, sentence 50

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But the poor fat officer could do nothing but squat on his knees with his hands together, gasping.

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**Who acts:** poor fat officer · **What happens:** do, gasp · **To what, where:** nothing, knees

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor fat officer), 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:pg3454:16:50
# text = But the poor fat officer could do nothing but squat on his knees with his hands together, gasping.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
3	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
4	fat	fat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	compound	_	_
5	officer	officer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
6	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	7	obj	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	squat	squat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	conj	_	_
11	on	on	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	knees	knee	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nmod	_	_
14	with	with	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	hands	hand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	_
17	together	together	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
19	gasping	gasp	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	7	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | could | the poor fat officer | nothing |  | officer's knees |  | with officer's hands; together *property* | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Eventuality |
| 2 | **gasp** | gerund | the poor fat officer *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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