---
title: Prince Darling went up to a young girl who was trying to eat a few b… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Prince Darling went up to a young girl who was trying to eat a few blades of grass, she was so hungry. Who acts: Prince Darling, young girl, girl. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Darling, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/39/132/)

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Prince Darling, sentence 132

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Prince Darling went up to a young girl who was trying to eat a few blades of grass, she was so hungry.

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**Who acts:** Prince Darling, young girl, girl · **What happens:** go up, try, eat, be · **To what, where:** few blades

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Darling. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Prince Darling, young girl, girl), 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:pg503:39:132
# text = Prince Darling went up to a young girl who was trying to eat a few blades of grass, she was so hungry.
1	Prince	Prince	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	compound	_	_
2	Darling	Darling	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	up	up	ADP	RP	_	3	compound:prt	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
9	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	11	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	trying	try	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	acl:relcl	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	blades	blade	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	_
17	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	grass	grass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	_
20	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	23	nsubj	_	_
21	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	23	cop	_	_
22	so	so	ADV	RB	_	23	advmod	_	_
23	hungry	hungry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go up** | past | Prince Darling |  |  |  |  | to a young girl | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1-1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 2 | **try** | past · progressive | a young girl |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **eat** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | a young girl *not said here* | a few blades of grass |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent blade=Patient |
| 4 | **is** | past | girl |  |  |  |  | hungry *property* | 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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