---
title: ‘I would fain get a sight of the king’s son before he marries,’ sigh… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I would fain get a sight of the king’s son before he marries,’ sighed she. Who acts: I, shoemaker, girl. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 29, 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/pg3454/29/103/)

<!-- 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 29](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/29/) / 103

# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 29, sentence 103

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘I would fain get a sight of the king’s son before he marries,’ sighed she.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** I, shoemaker, girl · **What happens:** get, marry, sigh, sight · **To what, where:** sight, son

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 29. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, shoemaker, girl), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg3454:2669`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg3454:29:103
# text = ‘I would fain get a sight of the king’s son before he marries,’ sighed she.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	fain	fain	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	ccomp	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	sight	sight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod:poss	_	_
11	’s	's	PART	POS	_	10	case	_	_
12	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	_
13	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
14	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	marries	marry	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
17	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
18	sighed	sigh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
19	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	18	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **get** | would | I | a sight of the king's son |  |  |  | fain *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer sight=Stimulus |
| 2 | **marry** | present | shoemaker |  |  |  |  |  | vn amalgamate-22.2-3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **sigh** | past | girl |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **sight** |  |  | the king's son |  |  |  |  | nom sight «cognition transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 102](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/29/102/)
- next →: [sentence 104](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/29/104/)
- ↑ back to [The Lilac Fairy Book, part 29](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/29/)