---
title: But he took heart and tried to comfort his daughters, who looked fri… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But he took heart and tried to comfort his daughters, who looked frightened to death. Who acts: King. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Pig, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Enchanted Pig, sentence 58

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But he took heart and tried to comfort his daughters, who looked frightened to death.

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**Who acts:** King · **What happens:** take, try, comfort, frighten · **To what, where:** heart, daughters

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Pig. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (King), 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:pg540:12:58
# text = But he took heart and tried to comfort his daughters, who looked frightened to death.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	heart	heart	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	comfort	comfort	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
9	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	daughters	daughter	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	14	nsubj:pass	_	_
13	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux:pass	_	_
14	frightened	frighten	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	acl:relcl	_	_
15	to	to	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | King | heart |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent heart=Theme |
| 2 | **try** | past | King *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **comfort** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | King *not said here* | King's daughters |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus daughter=Experiencer |
| 4 | **frighten** | past · passive |  | King's daughters |  |  |  | to death | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: subject=Experiencer |

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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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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