---
title: Not even a servant was to be seen; there was no sign of life in the… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Not even a servant was to be seen; there was no sign of life in the palace! Who acts: sign. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Beauty and the Beast, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Beauty and the Beast, part 1, sentence 41

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Not even a servant was to be seen; there was no sign of life in the palace!

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**Who acts:** sign · **What happens:** see, be, sign · **To what, where:** servant, life, palace

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Beauty and the Beast, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sign), 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:pg503:14:41
# text = Not even a servant was to be seen; there was no sign of life in the palace!
1	Not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
2	even	even	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	servant	servant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj:pass	_	_
5	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux:pass	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
7	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	aux:pass	_	_
8	seen	see	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	11	expl	_	_
11	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
12	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	13	det	_	_
13	sign	sign	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	_
16	in	in	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	palace	palace	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** | past · passive |  | a servant |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Stimulus |
| 2 | **be** | past | no sign of life in the palace |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **sign** |  |  | life |  | the palace |  |  | nom sign «communication transitive»: of=patient in=place |

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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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