---
title: On the tallest of the rocks sat the giant as on a throne. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: On the tallest of the rocks sat the giant as on a throne. Who acts: tallest. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Beasts(11), part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Grateful Beasts(11), part 4, sentence 24

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On the tallest of the rocks sat the giant as on a throne.

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**Who acts:** tallest · **What happens:** sit · **To what, where:** giant

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Beasts(11), 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 (tallest), 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:pg640:17:24
# text = On the tallest of the rocks sat the giant as on a throne.
1	On	on	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	tallest	tall	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	7	nsubj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	rocks	rock	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
7	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	giant	giant	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	obj	_	_
10	as	as	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
11	on	on	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	throne	throne	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | past | the tallest | the giant |  |  |  | as a throne | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location giant=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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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