---
title: Sudden the tapers cease to burn, The minstrels cease to play. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Sudden the tapers cease to burn, The minstrels cease to play. Who acts: Sudden tapers, minstrels. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Black Bull of Norroway, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Black Bull of Norroway, sentence 3

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Sudden the tapers cease to burn, The minstrels cease to play.

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**Who acts:** Sudden tapers, minstrels · **What happens:** cease, burn, play

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Black Bull of Norroway. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Sudden tapers, minstrels), 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:pg503:55:3
# text = Sudden the tapers cease to burn, The minstrels cease to play.
1	Sudden	sudden	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	tapers	taper	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	cease	cease	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	burn	burn	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	minstrels	minstrel	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
10	cease	cease	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	play	play	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cease** | present | the Sudden tapers |  |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Affector clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **burn** | to-infinitive | the Sudden tapers *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **cease** | present | the minstrels |  |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Affector clause=Eventuality |
| 4 | **play** | to-infinitive | the minstrels *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn performance-26.7-1 «NP V»: 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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