---
title: Quick as thought the lame mouse snatched up the precious talisman an… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Quick as thought the lame mouse snatched up the precious talisman and carried it off to the boat. Who acts: lame mouse. 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/pg503/2/201/)

<!-- 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/) / 201

# The Blue Fairy Book, The Bronze Ring, sentence 201

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Quick as thought the lame mouse snatched up the precious talisman and carried it off to the boat.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** lame mouse · **What happens:** think, snatch up, carry off · **To what, where:** lame mouse, precious talisman, talisman, boat

<!-- .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 (lame mouse), 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:pg503:2:201
# text = Quick as thought the lame mouse snatched up the precious talisman and carried it off to the boat.
1	Quick	quick	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
2	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
3	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	1	advcl	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	lame	lame	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	mouse	mouse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
7	snatched	snatch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	acl	_	_
8	up	up	ADP	RP	_	7	compound:prt	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	precious	precious	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	talisman	talisman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	carried	carry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	off	off	ADP	RP	_	13	compound:prt	_	_
16	to	to	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	boat	boat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **think** *speech: other* | past |  | the lame mouse |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot mouse=Theme |
| 2 | **snatch up** | participle | the lame mouse *not said here* | the precious talisman |  |  |  |  | vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent talisman=Theme |
| 3 | **carry off** | past |  | talisman |  | the boat |  |  | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent it=Theme to boat=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 200](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/2/200/)
- next →: [sentence 202](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/2/202/)
- ↑ back to [The Bronze Ring](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/2/)