---
title: She was filling up his glass, while he stuck his fork into the fish… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: She was filling up his glass, while he stuck his fork into the fish which was his favourite dish. Who acts: wife, sexton, fish. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus, 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/pg640/41/33/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus, sentence 33

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She was filling up his glass, while he stuck his fork into the fish which was his favourite dish.

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**Who acts:** wife, sexton, fish · **What happens:** fill up, stick, be · **To what, where:** glass, fork, favourite dish

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wife, sexton, fish), 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:pg640:41:33
# text = She was filling up his glass, while he stuck his fork into the fish which was his favourite dish.
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	filling	fill	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	up	up	ADP	RP	_	3	compound:prt	_	_
5	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	glass	glass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	while	while	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	stuck	stick	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
11	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	fork	fork	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	into	into	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
16	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	20	nsubj	_	_
17	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	20	cop	_	_
18	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	20	nmod:poss	_	_
19	favourite	favourite	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	dish	dish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fill up** | past · progressive | wife | sexton's glass |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent glass=Patient |
| 2 | **stick** | past | sexton | sexton's fork |  |  |  | into the fish | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent fork=Theme into fish=Destination |
| 3 | **is a** | past | the fish | sexton's favourite dish |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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