---
title: They sat close to each other, and he told her a story about her eyes. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They sat close to each other, and he told her a story about her eyes. Who acts: Turks, merchant. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 4, 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/pg5615/4/91/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 4, sentence 91

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They sat close to each other, and he told her a story about her eyes.

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**Who acts:** Turks, merchant · **What happens:** sit, tell · **To what, where:** story, princess · **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 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Turks, merchant), 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:pg5615:4:91
# text = They sat close to each other, and he told her a story about her eyes.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	close	close	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	2	advmod	_	_
4	to	to	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	each	each	DET	DT	ExtPos=PRON|PronType=Rcp	2	obl	_	_
6	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	fixed	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
11	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	iobj	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
14	about	about	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | past | Turks *= turk* |  |  |  |  | to each; close *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | merchant | a story | princess |  |  | about princess's eyes | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent she=Recipient story=Topic |

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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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