---
title: The old hag, who was the most frightful of them all, went first to t… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The old hag, who was the most frightful of them all, went first to taste the porridge. Who acts: old hag. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Ring (30), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, Prince Ring (30), sentence 110

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The old hag, who was the most frightful of them all, went first to taste the porridge.

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**Who acts:** old hag · **What happens:** be, go, taste · **To what, where:** porridge

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Ring (30). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old hag), 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:pg640:42:110
# text = The old hag, who was the most frightful of them all, went first to taste the porridge.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	hag	hag	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
5	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	9	nsubj	_	_
6	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	most	most	ADV	RBS	Degree=Sup	9	advmod	_	_
9	frightful	frightful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obl	_	_
12	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	11	nmod:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
14	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	14	advmod	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	taste	taste	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	xcomp	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	porridge	porridge	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the old hag |  |  |  |  | of trolls *= troll*; frightful *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **go** | past | the old hag |  |  |  |  | first *property* | vn say-37.7 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **taste** | to-infinitive | the old hag *not said here* | the porridge |  |  |  |  | vn seem-109 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Theme porridge=Attribute |

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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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