---
title: On the third night he sat down again on his bench, and said, in the… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: On the third night he sat down again on his bench, and said, in the most desponding way: “If I could only shudder!” Who acts: luck. 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 143

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
On the third night he sat down again on his bench, and said, in the most desponding way: “If I could only shudder!”

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** luck · **What happens:** sit down, say, despond · **To what, where:** bench · **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 (luck), 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:pg503:13:143
# text = On the third night he sat down again on his bench, and said, in the most desponding way: “If I could only shudder!”
1	On	on	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	third	third	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	4	amod	_	_
4	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	down	down	ADP	RP	_	6	compound:prt	_	_
8	again	again	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
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	bench	bench	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
16	in	in	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
18	most	most	ADV	RBS	Degree=Sup	19	advmod	_	_
19	desponding	despond	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	20	amod	_	_
20	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	27	punct	_	_
22	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	27	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	25	mark	_	_
24	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	25	nsubj	_	_
25	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	27	aux	_	_
26	only	only	ADV	RB	_	27	advmod	_	_
27	shudder	shudder	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
28	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	27	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
29	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	27	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit down** | past | luck |  |  | luck's bench | again; night |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on bench=Location |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | luck *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **despond** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | 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.

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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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