---
title: Several mice offered themselves for this mission and set out to find… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Several mice offered themselves for this mission and set out to find the young captain. Who acts: Several mice. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Bronze Ring, 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/pg503/2/177/)

<!-- 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 Bronze Ring](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/2/) / 177

# The Blue Fairy Book, The Bronze Ring, sentence 177

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Several mice offered themselves for this mission and set out to find the young captain.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Several mice · **What happens:** offer, set out, find · **To what, where:** mice, young captain

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Bronze Ring. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Several mice), 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:pg503:2:177
# text = Several mice offered themselves for this mission and set out to find the young captain.
1	Several	several	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	mice	mouse	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	offered	offer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	3	obj	_	_
5	for	for	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	det	_	_
7	mission	mission	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	set	set	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
10	out	out	ADP	RP	_	9	compound:prt	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	advcl	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	captain	captain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **offer** | past | Several mice | mice *= mouse* |  |  |  | for this mission *goal* | vn future\_having-13.3 «NP V NP PP.goal»: agent=Agent themselves=Theme for mission=Goal |
| 2 | **set out** | infinitive | Several mice *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **find** | to-infinitive | Several mice *not said here* | the young captain |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent captain=Topic |

<!-- .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 176](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/2/176/)
- next →: [sentence 178](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/2/178/)
- ↑ back to [The Bronze Ring](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/2/)