---
title: There were vessels of gold and silver, but not one human being was t… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: There were vessels of gold and silver, but not one human being was to be seen. Who acts: vessels. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Soria Moria Castle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, Soria Moria Castle, sentence 17

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There were vessels of gold and silver, but not one human being was to be seen.

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**Who acts:** vessels · **What happens:** be, see · **To what, where:** one human being

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

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg540:335`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg540:6:17
# text = There were vessels of gold and silver, but not one human being was to be seen.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	vessels	vessel	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	gold	gold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	silver	silver	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
10	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	13	nummod	_	_
12	human	human	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	being	being	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nsubj:pass	_	_
14	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
16	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	aux:pass	_	_
17	seen	see	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	conj	_	_
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | vessels of gold and silver |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **see** | past · passive |  | one human being |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Stimulus |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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