---
title: “The very thing,” he said, and laid himself down in it. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “The very thing,” he said, and laid himself down in it. Who acts: thing. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, sentence 108

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“The very thing,” he said, and laid himself down in it.

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**Who acts:** thing · **What happens:** say, lay down · **To what, where:** other, bed · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (thing), 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:pg503:13:108
# text = “The very thing,” he said, and laid himself down in it.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	very	very	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	laid	lay	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
12	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	11	obj	_	_
13	down	down	ADP	RP	_	11	compound:prt	_	_
14	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the thing |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **lay down** | past |  | other |  | bed |  |  | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent himself=Theme in it=Destination |

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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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