---
title: The robbers stared with open mouths, and at last they said, ‘Master… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The robbers stared with open mouths, and at last they said, ‘Master Joseph, you may keep the fifty gold pieces. Who acts: robbers, Master Joseph. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 17, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/17/76/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 17, sentence 76

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The robbers stared with open mouths, and at last they said, ‘Master Joseph, you may keep the fifty gold pieces.

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**Who acts:** robbers, Master Joseph · **What happens:** stare, say, keep · **To what, where:** last, fifty gold pieces · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (robbers, Master Joseph), 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:pg5615:17:76
# text = The robbers stared with open mouths, and at last they said, ‘Master Joseph, you may keep the fifty gold pieces.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	robbers	robber	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	stared	stare	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	with	with	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	open	open	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	mouths	mouth	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
9	at	at	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	obl	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
14	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	20	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	Master	Master	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	compound	_	_
16	Joseph	Joseph	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	20	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
18	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
19	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
20	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	conj	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	24	det	_	_
22	fifty	fifty	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	24	nummod	_	_
23	gold	gold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	compound	_	_
24	pieces	piece	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stare** | past | the robbers |  |  |  |  | with open mouths | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | robbers *= robber* |  |  | last |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **keep** | may | Master Joseph | the fifty gold pieces |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent piece=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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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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