---
title: But just as things looked their worst along came Esben. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But just as things looked their worst along came Esben. Who acts: things, Esben. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 28, 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/pg5615/28/116/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 28, sentence 116

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But just as things looked their worst along came Esben.

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**Who acts:** things, Esben · **What happens:** look, come · **To what, where:** worst

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 28. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (things, Esben), 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:pg5615:28:116
# text = But just as things looked their worst along came Esben.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	just	just	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
3	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
4	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
5	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	worst	bad	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	5	obj	_	_
8	along	along	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
10	Esben	Esben	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **look** | past | things | brothers's worst |  |  |  |  | vn seem-109-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme bad=Attribute |
| 2 | **come** | past | Esben |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «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 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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