---
title: Then he took the skulls, placed them on his lathe, and turned them t… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Then he took the skulls, placed them on his lathe, and turned them till they were round. Who acts: man, skulls. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/13/133/)

<!-- 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 Blue Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/) / [The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Lea…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/13/) / 133

# The Blue Fairy Book, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, sentence 133

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Then he took the skulls, placed them on his lathe, and turned them till they were round.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** man, skulls · **What happens:** take, place, turn, be · **To what, where:** skulls, lathe

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (man, skulls), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg503:13:133
# text = Then he took the skulls, placed them on his lathe, and turned them till they were round.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	skulls	skull	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	placed	place	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
8	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	on	on	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	lathe	lathe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	turned	turn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
15	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	obj	_	_
16	till	till	SCONJ	IN	_	19	mark	_	_
17	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
18	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
19	round	round	ADV	RB	_	14	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | man | the skulls |  |  | then |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent skull=Theme |
| 2 | **place** | past | man *not said here* | skulls *= skull* |  | man's lathe |  |  | vn put-9.1-2 «NP V PP.destination NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme on lathe=Destination |
| 3 | **turn** | past | man *not said here* | skulls *= skull* |  |  |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent they=Theme |
| 4 | **is** | past | skulls *= skull* |  |  |  |  | round *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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 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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 132](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/13/132/)
- next →: [sentence 134](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/13/134/)
- ↑ back to [The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/13/)