---
title: Scarcely was she in her usual place behind the stove when her father… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Scarcely was she in her usual place behind the stove when her father came home with the witch. Who acts: Scarcely, father. 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 99

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Scarcely was she in her usual place behind the stove when her father came home with the witch.

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**Who acts:** Scarcely, father · **What happens:** be, come · **To what, where:** usual place

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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 (Scarcely, father), 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:pg540:14:99
# text = Scarcely was she in her usual place behind the stove when her father came home with the witch.
1	Scarcely	Scarcely	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
3	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
4	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
6	usual	usual	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
8	behind	behind	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	stove	stove	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	_
11	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	14	mark	_	_
12	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
14	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	_
15	home	home	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
16	with	with	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	witch	witch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | Scarcely |  |  | Scarcely's usual place |  | behind the stove | tree rules |
| 2 | **come** | past | Scarcely's father |  |  |  |  | with the witch; home *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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