---
title: He looked so distinguished that hardly anyone would have known who h… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He looked so distinguished that hardly anyone would have known who he was. Who acts: Michael. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, sentence 166

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He looked so distinguished that hardly anyone would have known who he was.

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**Who acts:** Michael · **What happens:** look, know, be · **To what, where:** anyone · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Dancing Princesses. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Michael), 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:pg540:2:166
# text = He looked so distinguished that hardly anyone would have known who he was.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	so	so	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	distinguished	distinguished	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	xcomp	_	_
5	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
6	hardly	hardly	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
7	anyone	anyone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	10	nsubj:pass	_	_
8	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
9	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	aux	_	_
10	known	know	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	advcl	_	_
11	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	10	ccomp	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
13	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **look** | past | Michael |  |  |  |  | distinguished *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **know** | would · perfect · passive |  | anyone |  |  |  | hardly *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: subject=Stimulus |
| 3 | **is a** | past | Michael |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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