---
title: Whereupon Charming cut off his head before he knew anything about it… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Whereupon Charming cut off his head before he knew anything about it, and the raven from a tree close by croaked out: Who acts: Charming, Pray. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks, 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/pg503/28/131/)

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks, sentence 131

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Whereupon Charming cut off his head before he knew anything about it, and the raven from a tree close by croaked out:

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**Who acts:** Charming, Pray · **What happens:** cut off, know, croak out · **To what, where:** head, anything

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Charming, Pray), 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:pg503:28:131
# text = Whereupon Charming cut off his head before he knew anything about it, and the raven from a tree close by croaked out:
1	Whereupon	whereupon	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
2	Charming	Charming	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	cut	cut	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	off	off	ADP	RP	_	3	compound:prt	_	_
5	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
7	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	knew	know	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	advcl	_	_
10	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	9	obj	_	_
11	about	about	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	raven	raven	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
17	from	from	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod	_	_
20	close	close	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
21	by	by	SCONJ	IN	_	22	mark	_	_
22	croaked	croak	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	advcl	_	_
23	out	out	ADP	RP	_	22	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cut off** | past | Charming | Pray's head |  |  |  | the raven from a tree *obl*; whereupon *property* | vn stop-55.4-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Affector head=Eventuality |
| 2 | **know** | past | Pray | anything |  |  |  | about giant | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer anything=Stimulus |
| 3 | **croak out** | participle | Charming *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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.

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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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