---
title: I took nine sticks, and fixed them firmly in the ground in a square. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: I took nine sticks, and fixed them firmly in the ground in a square. Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Chapter III, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Chapter III, sentence 6

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I took nine sticks, and fixed them firmly in the ground in a square.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** take, fix · **To what, where:** nine sticks, sticks, ground

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Chapter III. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg503:45:6
# text = I took nine sticks, and fixed them firmly in the ground in a square.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	nine	nine	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	4	nummod	_	_
4	sticks	stick	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	fixed	fix	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
8	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	firmly	firmly	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	square	square	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | I | nine sticks |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent stick=Theme |
| 2 | **fix** | past | I *not said here* | sticks *= stick* |  | the ground |  | in a square; firmly *property* | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V NP together»: agent=Agent they=Patient |

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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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