---
title: The youth seized the axe, cleft the anvil open, and jammed in the ol… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The youth seized the axe, cleft the anvil open, and jammed in the old man’s beard. Who acts: youth. 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/pg503/13/168/)

<!-- 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/) / 168

# The Blue Fairy Book, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, sentence 168

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The youth seized the axe, cleft the anvil open, and jammed in the old man’s beard.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** youth · **What happens:** seize, cleft, jam · **To what, where:** axe, anvil, beard

<!-- .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 (youth), 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:pg503:13:168
# text = The youth seized the axe, cleft the anvil open, and jammed in the old man’s beard.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	youth	youth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	seized	seize	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	axe	axe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	cleft	cleft	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	anvil	anvil	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	open	open	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	jammed	jam	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	conj	_	_
14	in	in	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
16	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	’s	's	PART	POS	_	17	case	_	_
19	beard	beard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **seize** | past | the youth | the axe |  |  |  |  | vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent axe=Theme |
| 2 | **cleft** | infinitive | the youth *not said here* | the anvil |  |  |  | open *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **jam** | participle | the youth *not said here* |  |  | the old man's beard |  |  | vn spray-9.7-1-1 «NP V PP.destination»: agent=Theme in beard=Destination |

<!-- .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 167](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/13/167/)
- next →: [sentence 169](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/13/169/)
- ↑ 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/)