---
title: But Trusty John remained behind with the steersman, and ordered the… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But Trusty John remained behind with the steersman, and ordered the ship to push off. Who acts: Trusty, ship. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Trusty John, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Trusty John, sentence 53

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But Trusty John remained behind with the steersman, and ordered the ship to push off.

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**Who acts:** Trusty, ship · **What happens:** remain, order, push off · **To what, where:** ship

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Trusty John. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Trusty, ship), 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:pg503:41:53
# text = But Trusty John remained behind with the steersman, and ordered the ship to push off.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	Trusty	Trusty	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	John	John	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	flat	_	_
4	remained	remain	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	behind	behind	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
6	with	with	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	steersman	steersman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	ordered	order	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	ship	ship	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	push	push	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
16	off	off	ADP	RP	_	15	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **remain** | past | Trusty |  |  |  |  | with the steersman; behind *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **order** | past |  | the ship |  |  |  |  | vn order-58.3-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent ship=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 3 | **push off** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | the ship *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn push-12-1-1 «NP V PP»: 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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