---
title: The Scullion stopped at once, just as he was about to wring the Cana… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The Scullion stopped at once, just as he was about to wring the Canary’s neck. Who acts: Scullion, cook. 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 278

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The Scullion stopped at once, just as he was about to wring the Canary’s neck.

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**Who acts:** Scullion, cook · **What happens:** stop, be, wring · **To what, where:** neck

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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 (Scullion, cook), 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:pg540:40:278
# text = The Scullion stopped at once, just as he was about to wring the Canary’s neck.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Scullion	Scullion	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	stopped	stop	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	at	at	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	just	just	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
8	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
11	about	about	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	parataxis	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	wring	wring	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	Canary	Canary	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	17	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’s	's	PART	POS	_	15	case	_	_
17	neck	neck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stop** | past | the Scullion |  |  |  |  |  | vn lodge-46 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme at once=Location |
| 2 | **is** | past | cook |  |  |  |  | about *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **wring** | to-infinitive | cook *not said here* | the Canary's neck |  |  |  |  | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent neck=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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