---
title: “What a marvel!” cried the Princess, starting back a little. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “What a marvel!” cried the Princess, starting back a little. Who acts: marvel. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Sheep, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Wonderful Sheep, part 1, sentence 79

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“What a marvel!” cried the Princess, starting back a little.

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**Who acts:** marvel · **What happens:** cry, start back · **To what, where:** Princess, little

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Sheep, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (marvel), 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:pg503:30:79
# text = “What a marvel!” cried the Princess, starting back a little.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	4	det:predet	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	marvel	marvel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	Princess	Princess	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	starting	start	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	7	advcl	_	_
12	back	back	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | what marvel | the Princess |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent princess=Topic |
| 2 | **start back** | gerund | what marvel *not said here* | a little |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |

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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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