---
title: So they sat down and listened while he told the following tale. — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz · tree and pragmatics
description: So they sat down and listened while he told the following tale. Who acts: chairs, plenty. A sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter XV. The Discovery of Oz, the Terrible, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapter XV. The Discovery of Oz, the Terrible, sentence 100

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So they sat down and listened while he told the following tale.

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**Who acts:** chairs, plenty · **What happens:** sit down, listen, tell, follow · **To what, where:** following tale · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter XV. The Discovery of Oz, the Terrible. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (chairs, plenty), 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:pg55:17:100
# text = So they sat down and listened while he told the following tale.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	down	down	ADP	RP	_	3	compound:prt	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	listened	listen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
7	while	while	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	advcl	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	following	follow	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	12	amod	_	_
12	tale	tale	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit down** | past | chairs *= chair* |  |  |  |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **listen** | past | chairs *= chair* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | plenty | the following tale |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent tale=Recipient |
| 4 | **follow** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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 Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Project Gutenberg book 55 (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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