---
title: His boots creaked dreadfully loud, but he was not frightened.’ — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: His boots creaked dreadfully loud, but he was not frightened.’ Who acts: boots. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 9, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 9, sentence 97

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His boots creaked dreadfully loud, but he was not frightened.’

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**Who acts:** boots · **What happens:** creak, not frighten · **To what, where:** Kay

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boots), 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:pg5615:9:97
# text = His boots creaked dreadfully loud, but he was not frightened.’
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	boots	boot	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	creaked	creak	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	dreadfully	dreadfully	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	loud	loud	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj:pass	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux:pass	_	_
10	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	frightened	frighten	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **creak** | past | Kay's boots |  |  |  |  | loud *property* | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **frighten** | past · passive |  | Kay |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: subject=Experiencer |

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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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