---
title: But the sexton remained motionless, so that the youth might think th… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the sexton remained motionless, so that the youth might think that it was a ghost. Who acts: sexton, 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.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was, sentence 23

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But the sexton remained motionless, so that the youth might think that it was a ghost.

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**Who acts:** sexton, youth · **What happens:** remain, think, be · **To what, where:** ghost

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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 (sexton, youth), 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:pg503:13:23
# text = But the sexton remained motionless, so that the youth might think that it was a ghost.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	sexton	sexton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	remained	remain	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	motionless	motionless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
7	so	so	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
8	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	youth	youth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
11	might	might	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	think	think	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
13	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
15	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	ghost	ghost	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **remain** | past | the sexton |  |  |  |  | motionless *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* | might | the youth |  |  |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** | past | youth | a ghost |  |  |  |  | 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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