---
title: And so the sexton took him into his house, and his duty was to toll… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And so the sexton took him into his house, and his duty was to toll the bell. Who acts: sexton, duty. 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/pg503/13/17/)

<!-- 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/) / 17

# The Blue Fairy Book, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, sentence 17

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
And so the sexton took him into his house, and his duty was to toll the bell.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** sexton, duty · **What happens:** take, be · **To what, where:** father, house

<!-- .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 (sexton, duty), 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:pg503:13:17
# text = And so the sexton took him into his house, and his duty was to toll the bell.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	so	so	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	sexton	sexton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	_
7	into	into	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	duty	duty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
14	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	toll	toll	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	advcl	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	bell	bell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | the sexton | father |  | father's house |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent he=Theme into house=Destination |
| 2 | **is** | past | father's duty |  |  |  |  | toll *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 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/13/16/)
- next →: [sentence 18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/13/18/)
- ↑ 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/)