---
title: The thief, meantime, told his comrades of his discovery. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The thief, meantime, told his comrades of his discovery. Who acts: thief, Mustapha. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Forty Thieves, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Forty Thieves, sentence 81

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The thief, meantime, told his comrades of his discovery.

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**Who acts:** thief, Mustapha · **What happens:** tell, discover · **To what, where:** comrades · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Forty Thieves. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (thief, Mustapha), 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:pg503:34:81
# text = The thief, meantime, told his comrades of his discovery.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	thief	thief	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	meantime	meantime	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
6	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	comrades	comrade	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	iobj	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	discovery	discovery	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | the thief and meantime |  | Mustapha's comrades of Mustapha's discovery |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent comrade=Recipient |
| 2 | **discover** |  | Mustapha |  |  |  |  |  | nom discovery «act transitive»: poss=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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