---
title: So he did what the Princess had told him. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: So he did what the Princess had told him. Who acts: flask, Princess. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Princesses of Whiteland, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Three Princesses of Whiteland, sentence 25

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So he did what the Princess had told him.

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**Who acts:** flask, Princess · **What happens:** do, tell · **To what, where:** flask · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Princesses of Whiteland. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (flask, Princess), 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:pg540:26:25
# text = So he did what the Princess had told him.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	did	do	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	8	obj	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	Princess	Princess	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
7	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	told	tell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	3	conj	_	_
9	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | past | flask |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past · perfect | the Princess |  | flask |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent he=Recipient what=Topic |

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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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