---
title: An old man with a long white beard was standing in the outhouse, cho… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: An old man with a long white beard was standing in the outhouse, chopping Yule logs. Who acts: old man. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Why the Sea Is Salt, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Why the Sea Is Salt, sentence 10

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An old man with a long white beard was standing in the outhouse, chopping Yule logs.

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**Who acts:** old man · **What happens:** stand, chop · **To what, where:** outhouse, Yule logs

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Why the Sea Is Salt. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old man), 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:pg503:20:10
# text = An old man with a long white beard was standing in the outhouse, chopping Yule logs.
1	An	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
4	with	with	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
6	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
7	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	beard	beard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	standing	stand	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	outhouse	outhouse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
15	chopping	chop	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	10	conj	_	_
16	Yule	yule	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	compound	_	_
17	logs	log	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | past · progressive | a old man with a long white beard |  |  | the outhouse |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in outhouse=Location |
| 2 | **chop** | gerund | a old man with a long white beard *not said here* | Yule logs |  |  |  |  | vn carve-21.2-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent log=Patient |

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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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