---
title: But the King’s son stood firm by what he had commanded, and said: — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the King’s son stood firm by what he had commanded, and said: Who acts: son. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Birch, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Wonderful Birch, sentence 156

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But the King’s son stood firm by what he had commanded, and said:

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**Who acts:** son · **What happens:** stand, command, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Wonderful Birch. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (son), 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:pg540:14:156
# text = But the King’s son stood firm by what he had commanded, and said:
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	King	King	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’s	's	PART	POS	_	3	case	_	_
5	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	advcl	_	_
7	firm	firm	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	xcomp	_	_
8	by	by	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	6	obl	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
11	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	commanded	command	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	9	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | past | the King's son |  |  |  |  | firm *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent by what=Location |
| 2 | **command** | past · perfect | son |  |  |  |  |  | vn supervision-95.2.2-1 «NP V NP.predicate»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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 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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