---
title: Seize him at once by the beard and dash him to the ground.’ — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Seize him at once by the beard and dash him to the ground.’ Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch and Her Servants(22), part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Witch and Her Servants(22), part 3, sentence 46

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Seize him at once by the beard and dash him to the ground.’

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** seize, dash · **To what, where:** man

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch and Her Servants(22), part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg640:32:46
# text = Seize him at once by the beard and dash him to the ground.’
1	Seize	seize	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	obj	_	_
3	at	at	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	1	obl	_	_
5	by	by	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	beard	beard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	dash	dash	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	1	conj	_	_
10	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **seize** | imperative | you *not said here* | man |  |  |  | by the beard | vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Theme |
| 2 | **dash** | infinitive | you *not said here* | man |  |  |  | to the ground *result* | vn hit-18.1 «NP V NP PP.result»: agent=Agent he=Patient to ground=Result |

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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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