---
title: Before they had gone far he stopped, and held out a stick. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Before they had gone far he stopped, and held out a stick. Who acts: clothes, son. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 28, 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/pg3454/28/81/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 28, sentence 81

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Before they had gone far he stopped, and held out a stick.

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**Who acts:** clothes, son · **What happens:** go, stop, hold out · **To what, where:** stick

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 28. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (clothes, son), 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:pg3454:28:81
# text = Before they had gone far he stopped, and held out a stick.
1	Before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	4	mark	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	gone	go	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	far	far	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	7	advmod	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	stopped	stop	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	held	hold	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	4	conj	_	_
11	out	out	ADP	RP	_	10	compound:prt	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	stick	stick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | past · perfect | clothes |  |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **stop** | past | son |  |  |  |  | far *property* | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |
| 3 | **hold out** | participle | clothes *not said here* | a stick |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent stick=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 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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