---
title: The Queen took them and began to plait them, saying: — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The Queen took them and began to plait them, saying: Who acts: Queen. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Good Mouse, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Little Good Mouse, sentence 56

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The Queen took them and began to plait them, saying:

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**Who acts:** Queen · **What happens:** take, begin, plait, say · **To what, where:** straws · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Good Mouse. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Queen), 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:pg540:22:56
# text = The Queen took them and began to plait them, saying:
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Queen	Queen	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	plait	plait	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
9	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	saying	say	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	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 | **take** | past | the Queen | straws *= straw* |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme |
| 2 | **begin** | past | the Queen *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **plait** | to-infinitive | the Queen *not said here* | straws *= straw* |  |  |  |  | vn braid-41.2.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Patient |
| 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | gerund | the Queen *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | 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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