---
title: He sniffed about to the right and left, saying: — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He sniffed about to the right and left, saying: Who acts: sheep. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Little Thumb, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Little Thumb, sentence 72

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He sniffed about to the right and left, saying:

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**Who acts:** sheep · **What happens:** sniff, leave, say · **To what, where:** right · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Little Thumb. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sheep), 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:pg503:33:72
# text = He sniffed about to the right and left, saying:
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sniffed	sniff	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	about	about	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
4	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	right	right	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	left	leave	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	saying	say	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sniff** | past | sheep |  | the right |  |  | about *property* | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V PP.recipient»: agent=Agent to right=Recipient |
| 2 | **leave** | past | sheep *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | gerund | sheep *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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