---
title: The princesses began at once to open their wardrobes and boxes. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The princesses began at once to open their wardrobes and boxes. Who acts: princesses. 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 53

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The princesses began at once to open their wardrobes and boxes.

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**Who acts:** princesses · **What happens:** begin, open · **To what, where:** wardrobes

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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 (princesses), 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:pg540:2:53
# text = The princesses began at once to open their wardrobes and boxes.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	princesses	princess	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	at	at	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	3	obl	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	open	open	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
8	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	wardrobes	wardrobe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	boxes	box	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past | the princesses |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **open** | to-infinitive | the princesses *not said here* | princesses's wardrobes and boxes |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location wardrobe=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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