---
title: It sang so beautifully that one could scarcely utter a cross word ag… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It sang so beautifully that one could scarcely utter a cross word against it. Who acts: rose, one. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Swineherd, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Swineherd, sentence 23

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It sang so beautifully that one could scarcely utter a cross word against it.

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**Who acts:** rose, one · **What happens:** sing, utter · **To what, where:** cross word

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Swineherd. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (rose, one), 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:pg640:43:23
# text = It sang so beautifully that one could scarcely utter a cross word against it.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sang	sing	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	so	so	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	beautifully	beautifully	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
5	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
6	one	one	PRON	PRP	Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
7	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
8	scarcely	scarcely	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	utter	utter	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	advcl	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	cross	cross	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	_
12	word	word	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
13	against	against	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sing** *speech: express* | past | rose |  |  |  |  | beautifully *property* | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **utter** *speech: other* | could | one | a cross word |  |  |  | against rose; scarcely *property* | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent word=Topic |

<!-- .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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