---
title: But she flung herself at her father’s feet, and prayed him to delay. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But she flung herself at her father’s feet, and prayed him to delay. Who acts: princess. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 23, 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/pg5615/23/29/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 23, sentence 29

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But she flung herself at her father’s feet, and prayed him to delay.

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**Who acts:** princess · **What happens:** fling, pray, delay · **To what, where:** princess, feet, father

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 23. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (princess), 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:pg5615:23:29
# text = But she flung herself at her father’s feet, and prayed him to delay.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	flung	fling	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	herself	herself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	3	obj	_	_
5	at	at	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
6	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’s	's	PART	POS	_	7	case	_	_
9	feet	foot	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	prayed	pray	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
13	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	delay	delay	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fling** | past | princess | princess |  | princess's father's feet |  |  | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP PP.destinations»: agent=Agent herself=Theme at foot=Destination |
| 2 | **pray** | past | princess *not said here* | father |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **delay** | to-infinitive | princess *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn delay-53.3-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent |

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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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