---
title: Mr. Whittington served as Sheriff of London and was three times Lord… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Mr. Whittington served as Sheriff of London and was three times Lord Mayor. Who acts: Whittington. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Whittington, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The History of Whittington, sentence 82

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Mr. Whittington served as Sheriff of London and was three times Lord Mayor.

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**Who acts:** Whittington · **What happens:** serve, be · **To what, where:** three times

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Whittington. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Whittington), 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:pg503:29:82
# text = Mr. Whittington served as Sheriff of London and was three times Lord Mayor.
1	Mr.	Mr.	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nmod:desc	_	_
2	Whittington	Whittington	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	served	serve	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	as	as	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	Sheriff	Sheriff	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	London	London	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
10	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	11	nummod	_	_
11	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl:unmarked	_	_
12	Lord	Lord	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	_
13	Mayor	Mayor	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **serve** | past | Whittington  Mr. |  |  |  |  | as Sheriff of London | vn masquerade-29.6-2 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Agent as sheriff=Attribute |
| 2 | **is a** | past |  | three times |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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