---
title: She tried to see if there was breath in him, but could not quite mak… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: She tried to see if there was breath in him, but could not quite make it out. Who acts: Princess, breath. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Blue Mountains, 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/pg640/45/54/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Blue Mountains, sentence 54

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She tried to see if there was breath in him, but could not quite make it out.

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**Who acts:** Princess, breath · **What happens:** try, see, be, not make out · **To what, where:** breath

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Blue Mountains. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Princess, breath), 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:pg640:45:54
# text = She tried to see if there was breath in him, but could not quite make it out.
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
6	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	7	expl	_	_
7	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	_
8	breath	breath	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
12	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
13	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
14	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	16	advmod	_	_
15	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
16	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	_
18	out	out	ADP	RP	_	16	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | past | Princess |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **see** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | Princess *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 3 | **be** *a condition, not said to happen* | past | breath in three |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **not** **make out** | could | Princess *not said here* | breath |  |  |  |  | vn sight-30.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer it=Stimulus |

<!-- .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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