---
title: ‘So that’s the staircase, is it?’ said the Prince. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘So that’s the staircase, is it?’ said the Prince. Who acts: Prince. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Brothers, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/41/130/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Red Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/) / [The Twelve Brothers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/41/) / 130

# The Red Fairy Book, The Twelve Brothers, sentence 130

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘So that’s the staircase, is it?’ said the Prince.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Prince · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** staircase · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Brothers. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Prince), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg540:41:130
# text = ‘So that’s the staircase, is it?’ said the Prince.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	So	so	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
3	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	4	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’s	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	ccomp	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	staircase	staircase	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	Prince	Prince	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | staircase |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the Prince |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 129](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/41/129/)
- next →: [sentence 131](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/41/131/)
- ↑ back to [The Twelve Brothers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/41/)