---
title: To his surprise the bar gave way at once, and he found he could brea… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: To his surprise the bar gave way at once, and he found he could break it into a thousand pieces. Who acts: bar, Girouette. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 30, 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/pg5615/30/83/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 30, sentence 83

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To his surprise the bar gave way at once, and he found he could break it into a thousand pieces.

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**Who acts:** bar, Girouette · **What happens:** give, find, break, surprise · **To what, where:** way, surprise, thousand 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 30. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (bar, Girouette), 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:pg5615:30:83
# text = To his surprise the bar gave way at once, and he found he could break it into a thousand pieces.
1	To	to	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	surprise	surprise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	bar	bar	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	gave	give	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
8	at	at	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	found	find	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
14	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
15	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
16	break	break	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	ccomp	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	_
18	into	into	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	thousand	thousand	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	21	nummod	_	_
21	pieces	piece	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give** | past | the bar | way | Girouette's surprise |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient PP.asset»: agent=Agent way=Theme to surprise=Recipient at once=Asset |
| 2 | **find** | past | Girouette |  |  |  |  |  | vn declare-29.4-1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 3 | **break** | could | Girouette | way |  |  |  | into thousand pieces *result* | vn break-45.1 «NP V NP PP.result»: agent=Agent it=Patient into piece=Result |
| 4 | **surprise** |  | Girouette |  |  |  |  |  | nom surprise «feeling transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .note -->
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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