---
title: There were plenty of Princesses, but he could not find out if they w… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: There were plenty of Princesses, but he could not find out if they were true Princesses. Who acts: plenty, they. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How to Tell a True Princess, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, How to Tell a True Princess, sentence 3

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There were plenty of Princesses, but he could not find out if they were true Princesses.

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**Who acts:** plenty, they · **What happens:** be, not find out · **To what, where:** true Princesses

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How to Tell a True Princess. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (plenty, they), 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:pg640:44:3
# text = There were plenty of Princesses, but he could not find out if they were true Princesses.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	plenty	plenty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	Princesses	princess	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
12	out	out	ADP	RP	_	11	compound:prt	_	_
13	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
14	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
15	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
16	true	true	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	Princesses	princess	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | plenty of Princesses |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **find out** | could | plenty |  |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V PP.topic»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** *a condition, not said to happen* | past | they | true Princesses |  |  |  |  | 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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