---
title: Being at a loss for a coachman, — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Being at a loss for a coachman, A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper, sentence 34

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Being at a loss for a coachman,

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**What happens:** be · **To what, where:** loss

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg503:11:34
# text = Being at a loss for a coachman,
1	Being	be	AUX	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	cop	_	_
2	at	at	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	loss	loss	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	for	for	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	coachman	coachman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | gerund |  |  |  | a loss |  | for a coachman | tree rules |

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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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