---
title: So she ordered the old boatman to steer for Squirrel Island. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: So she ordered the old boatman to steer for Squirrel Island. Who acts: Princess, old boatman. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Princess Mayblossom, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Princess Mayblossom, part 2, sentence 22

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So she ordered the old boatman to steer for Squirrel Island.

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**Who acts:** Princess, old boatman · **What happens:** order, steer · **To what, where:** old boatman

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Princess Mayblossom, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Princess, old boatman), 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:pg540:4:22
# text = So she ordered the old boatman to steer for Squirrel Island.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	ordered	order	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	boatman	boatman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	steer	steer	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
9	for	for	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	Squirrel	Squirrel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
11	Island	Island	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	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 | **order** | past | Princess | the old boatman |  |  |  |  | vn order-58.3-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent boatman=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **steer** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | the old boatman *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for Squirrel Island | vn accompany-51.7 «NP V NP»: 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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