---
title: What those towers were which he saw in the middle of a great thick w… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: What those towers were which he saw in the middle of a great thick wood? Who acts: towers. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, sentence 44

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What those towers were which he saw in the middle of a great thick wood?

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**Who acts:** towers · **What happens:** be, see · **To what, where:** towers, middle

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (towers), 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:pg503:10:44
# text = What those towers were which he saw in the middle of a great thick wood?
1	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	0	root	_	_
2	those	that	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	3	det	_	_
3	towers	tower	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	nsubj	_	_
4	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
5	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	7	nsubj	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	acl:relcl	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	middle	middle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
13	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
14	thick	thick	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	wood	wood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past |  | that towers |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **see** | past | that towers |  |  | the middle of a great thick wood |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |

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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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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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