---
title: His body was yellow and green, and his claws scarlet, and his tail w… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: His body was yellow and green, and his claws scarlet, and his tail was so long that it lay in a hundred coils. Who acts: body, claws, tail. 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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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks, sentence 158

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His body was yellow and green, and his claws scarlet, and his tail was so long that it lay in a hundred coils.

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**Who acts:** body, claws, tail · **What happens:** be, scarlet, lie · **To what, where:** hundred coils

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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 (body, claws, tail), 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:pg503:28:158
# text = His body was yellow and green, and his claws scarlet, and his tail was so long that it lay in a hundred coils.
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	body	body	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	yellow	yellow	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	green	green	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	claws	claw	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
11	scarlet	scarlet	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
14	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
16	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
17	so	so	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
19	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	21	mark	_	_
20	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
21	lay	lie	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	advcl	_	_
22	in	in	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
23	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	24	det	_	_
24	hundred	hundred	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	25	nummod	_	_
25	coils	coil	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	21	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | man's body |  |  |  |  | yellow *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | man's body *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **scarlet** | present | man's claws |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **is** | past | man's tail |  |  |  |  | long *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **lie** | past | tail |  |  | hundred coils |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in coil=Location |

<!-- .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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