---
title: Scarcely had she spoken before she felt a nice soft bed by her side,… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Scarcely had she spoken before she felt a nice soft bed by her side, and there beside Lisa was one too. Who acts: Scarcely, one. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 25, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/25/1/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Lilac Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/) / [The Lilac Fairy Book, part 25](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/25/) / 1

# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 25, sentence 1

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Scarcely had she spoken before she felt a nice soft bed by her side, and there beside Lisa was one too.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Scarcely, one · **What happens:** have, speak, feel, be · **To what, where:** nice soft bed · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 25. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Scarcely, one), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg3454:25:1
# text = Scarcely had she spoken before she felt a nice soft bed by her side, and there beside Lisa was one too.
1	Scarcely	Scarcely	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	spoken	speak	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	xcomp	_	_
5	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
6	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	felt	feel	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
9	nice	nice	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
10	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	bed	bed	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
12	by	by	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	side	side	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
17	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	20	expl	_	_
18	beside	beside	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	Lisa	Lisa	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	_
20	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
21	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	20	nsubj	_	_
22	too	too	ADV	RB	_	21	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | Scarcely |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **speak** *speech: other* | participle | Scarcely |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **feel** | past | Scarcely | a nice soft bed |  |  |  | by Scarcely's side | vn hunt-35.1 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent bed=Theme by side=Location |
| 4 | **be** | past | one |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24, 163](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/24/163/)
- next →: [sentence 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/25/2/)
- ↑ back to [The Lilac Fairy Book, part 25](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/25/)