---
title: All the princesses disappeared down a secret staircase, and Michael… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: All the princesses disappeared down a secret staircase, and Michael hastily followed them. Who acts: princesses, 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 61

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All the princesses disappeared down a secret staircase, and Michael hastily followed them.

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**Who acts:** princesses, Michael · **What happens:** disappear down, follow · **To what, where:** secret staircase, princesses

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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, 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:pg540:2:61
# text = All the princesses disappeared down a secret staircase, and Michael hastily followed them.
1	All	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	3	det:predet	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	princesses	princess	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	disappeared	disappear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	down	down	ADP	RP	_	4	compound:prt	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	secret	secret	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	staircase	staircase	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	Michael	Michael	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
12	hastily	hastily	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	followed	follow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
14	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **disappear down** | past | all princesses | a secret staircase |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **follow** | past | Michael | princesses *= princess* |  |  |  | hastily *property* | vn chase-51.6 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=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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