---
title: Scarcely had the canary drunk when she became a beautiful girl, tall… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Scarcely had the canary drunk when she became a beautiful girl, tall and straight as a poplar tree, with black eyes and a golden skin. Who acts: Scarcely, canary. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Canary, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Enchanted Canary, sentence 132

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Scarcely had the canary drunk when she became a beautiful girl, tall and straight as a poplar tree, with black eyes and a golden skin.

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**Who acts:** Scarcely, canary · **What happens:** have, drink, become · **To what, where:** beautiful girl

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Canary. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Scarcely, canary), 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:pg540:40:132
# text = Scarcely had the canary drunk when she became a beautiful girl, tall and straight as a poplar tree, with black eyes and a golden skin.
1	Scarcely	Scarcely	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	canary	canary	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	drunk	drink	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	ccomp	_	_
6	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	8	advmod	_	_
7	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	became	become	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
13	tall	tall	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	straight	straight	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	conj	_	_
16	as	as	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
18	poplar	poplar	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	compound	_	_
19	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	_
21	with	with	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
22	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	23	amod	_	_
23	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	conj	_	_
24	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	27	cc	_	_
25	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	27	det	_	_
26	golden	golden	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	amod	_	_
27	skin	skin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | Scarcely |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **drink** | past | the canary |  |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **become** | past | Scarcely | a beautiful girl |  |  |  |  | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient |

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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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