---
title: “How am I to find a ring that fell into the river a month ago?” said… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “How am I to find a ring that fell into the river a month ago?” said he. Who acts: dog, ring. 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 87

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“How am I to find a ring that fell into the river a month ago?” said he.

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**Who acts:** dog, ring · **What happens:** find, fall, say · **To what, where:** ring, river · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (dog, ring), 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:pg503:28:87
# text = “How am I to find a ring that fell into the river a month ago?” said he.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
3	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	19	ccomp	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	ring	ring	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
10	fell	fall	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	_
11	into	into	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	river	river	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	month	month	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl:unmarked	_	_
16	ago	ago	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
19	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
20	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	19	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **find** *in a quote* | present | dog | a ring |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ring=Topic |
| 2 | **fall** *in a quote* | past | a ring |  |  |  |  | into the river *result*; ago *property* | vn become-109.1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient into river=Result |
| 3 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | dog |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=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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