---
title: But the Prince, without saying a word, seized him at once by his bea… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the Prince, without saying a word, seized him at once by his beard and dashed him to the ground. Who acts: Prince. 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 50

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But the Prince, without saying a word, seized him at once by his beard and dashed him to the ground.

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**Who acts:** Prince · **What happens:** say, seize, dash · **To what, where:** word, Iwanich · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Prince), 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:pg640:32:50
# text = But the Prince, without saying a word, seized him at once by his beard and dashed him to the ground.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	Prince	Prince	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	without	without	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
6	saying	say	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	conj	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
10	seized	seize	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	_
12	at	at	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	10	obl	_	_
14	by	by	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	beard	beard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
18	dashed	dash	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	conj	_	_
19	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	obj	_	_
20	to	to	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | gerund | the Prince *not said here* | a word |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent word=Topic |
| 2 | **seize** | past | the Prince | Iwanich |  |  |  | by Iwanich's beard | vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Theme |
| 3 | **dash** | past | the Prince *not said here* | Iwanich |  |  |  | to the ground *result* | vn hit-18.1 «NP V NP PP.result»: agent=Agent he=Patient to ground=Result |

<!-- .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 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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