---
title: There stood a Princess outside the gate; but oh, in what a sad pligh… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: There stood a Princess outside the gate; but oh, in what a sad plight she was from the rain and the storm! Who acts: Princess. 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 9

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There stood a Princess outside the gate; but oh, in what a sad plight she was from the rain and the storm!

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**Who acts:** Princess · **What happens:** stand, be · **To what, where:** Princess, gate, rain

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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 (Princess), 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:pg640:44:9
# text = There stood a Princess outside the gate; but oh, in what a sad plight she was from the rain and the storm!
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	Princess	princess	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	outside	outside	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	gate	gate	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
10	oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	21	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
13	what	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	16	det:predet	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	sad	sad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	plight	plight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obl	_	_
17	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
18	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	cop	_	_
19	from	from	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	rain	rain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
22	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	24	cc	_	_
23	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	24	det	_	_
24	storm	storm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | past |  | a Princess |  | the gate; there |  |  | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent princess=Theme outside gate=Destination |
| 2 | **is** | past | Princess |  |  | the rain and the storm |  | in what sad plight | tree rules |

<!-- .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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