---
title: Then turning to his youngest son he said: — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Then turning to his youngest son he said: Who acts: prince. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Cat, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/25/20/)

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The White Cat, part 3, sentence 20

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Then turning to his youngest son he said:

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**Who acts:** prince · **What happens:** turn, say · **To what, where:** youngest son · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Cat, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (prince), 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:pg503:25:20
# text = Then turning to his youngest son he said:
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	2	advmod	_	_
2	turning	turn	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
5	youngest	young	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	6	amod	_	_
6	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **turn** | gerund |  |  |  |  | then | to prince's youngest son *result* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V PP.result»: agent=Theme to son=Result |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | prince | prince's youngest son *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent son=Topic |

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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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