---
title: Renelde did try, and to her great surprise the nettles when crushed… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Renelde did try, and to her great surprise the nettles when crushed and prepared gave a good thread, soft and light and firm. Who acts: Renelde, nettles. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Nettle Spinner, sentence 57

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Renelde did try, and to her great surprise the nettles when crushed and prepared gave a good thread, soft and light and firm.

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**Who acts:** Renelde, nettles · **What happens:** try, crush, prepare, give, surprise · **To what, where:** good thread, great surprise

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Renelde, nettles), 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:pg540:42:57
# text = Renelde did try, and to her great surprise the nettles when crushed and prepared gave a good thread, soft and light and firm.
1	Renelde	Renelde	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
2	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	try	try	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
8	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	surprise	surprise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	nettles	nettle	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	_
12	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	13	advmod	_	_
13	crushed	crush	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	acl	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	prepared	prepare	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	13	conj	_	_
16	gave	give	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
18	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	thread	thread	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
21	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	conj	_	_
22	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
23	light	light	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	conj	_	_
24	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	25	cc	_	_
25	firm	firm	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | past · do-support | Renelde |  |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **crush** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn carve-21.2-1 «NP V ADVP-Middle»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **prepare** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn establish-55.5-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **give** | past | the nettles | a good thread | Renelde's great surprise |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent thread=Theme to surprise=Recipient |
| 5 | **surprise** |  | Renelde |  |  |  |  |  | nom surprise «feeling transitive»: poss=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.

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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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