---
title: But he had hardly turned to continue his search when he met six drag… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But he had hardly turned to continue his search when he met six dragons covered with scales that were harder than iron. Who acts: King, scales. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Yellow Dwarf, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Yellow Dwarf, part 3, sentence 62

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But he had hardly turned to continue his search when he met six dragons covered with scales that were harder than iron.

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**Who acts:** King, scales · **What happens:** turn, continue, meet, cover, be, search · **To what, where:** search, six dragons

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Yellow Dwarf, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (King, scales), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg503:574`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg503:7:62
# text = But he had hardly turned to continue his search when he met six dragons covered with scales that were harder than iron.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	hardly	hardly	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	turned	turn	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	continue	continue	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	search	search	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	12	advmod	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	met	meet	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
13	six	six	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	nummod	_	_
14	dragons	dragon	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obj	_	_
15	covered	cover	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	14	acl	_	_
16	with	with	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	scales	scale	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obl	_	_
18	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	20	nsubj	_	_
19	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	20	cop	_	_
20	harder	hard	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	17	acl:relcl	_	_
21	than	than	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	iron	iron	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **turn** | past · perfect | King |  |  |  |  | hardly *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **continue** | to-infinitive | King *not said here* | King's search |  |  |  |  | vn sustain-55.6 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent search=Theme |
| 3 | **meet** | past | King | six dragons |  |  |  |  | vn meet-36.3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dragon=Co-Agent |
| 4 | **cover** | participle |  | six dragons *not said here* |  |  |  | with scales | vn fill-9.8-1 «NP V NP PP.theme»: agent=Agent with scale=Theme |
| 5 | **is** | past | scales |  |  |  |  | than iron; hard *property* | tree rules |
| 6 | **search** |  | King |  |  |  |  |  | nom search «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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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