---
title: He had already taken hold of one of them when his wife said to him: — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He had already taken hold of one of them when his wife said to him: Who acts: ogre, wife. 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 82

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He had already taken hold of one of them when his wife said to him:

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**Who acts:** ogre, wife · **What happens:** take, say · **To what, where:** hold, ogre · **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 (ogre, wife), 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:pg503:33:82
# text = He had already taken hold of one of them when his wife said to him:
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	already	already	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	taken	take	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	hold	hold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	5	nmod	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nmod	_	_
10	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	13	advmod	_	_
11	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past · perfect | ogre | hold of one of children |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hold=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | ogre's wife |  | ogre |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to he=Recipient |

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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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