---
title: So he took up a rifle which he had laid at his bedside. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: So he took up a rifle which he had laid at his bedside. Who acts: Governor. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Master Thief, sentence 232

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So he took up a rifle which he had laid at his bedside.

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**Who acts:** Governor · **What happens:** take up, lay · **To what, where:** rifle, bedside

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Governor), 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:pg540:9:232
# text = So he took up a rifle which he had laid at his bedside.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	up	up	ADP	RP	_	3	compound:prt	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	rifle	rifle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
7	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj:pass	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	laid	lay	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	acl:relcl	_	_
11	at	at	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	bedside	bedside	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take up** | past | Governor | a rifle |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent rifle=Theme |
| 2 | **lay** | past · perfect · passive |  | a rifle |  | Governor's bedside |  |  | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: subject=Theme at bedside=Destination |

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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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