---
title: Three years he spent travelling through forests and wildernesses, bu… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Three years he spent travelling through forests and wildernesses, but could find no one able to tell him anything of the Princess. Who acts: loss, one. 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/pg640/45/94/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Blue Mountains, sentence 94

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Three years he spent travelling through forests and wildernesses, but could find no one able to tell him anything of the Princess.

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**Who acts:** loss, one · **What happens:** spend, travel, find, tell · **To what, where:** forests, one, anything, loss · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (loss, 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:pg640:45:94
# text = Three years he spent travelling through forests and wildernesses, but could find no one able to tell him anything of the Princess.
1	Three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	nummod	_	_
2	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	spent	spend	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	travelling	travel	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
6	through	through	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	forests	forest	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	wildernesses	wilderness	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
12	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	advcl	_	_
14	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	15	det	_	_
15	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
16	able	able	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	xcomp	_	_
17	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	mark	_	_
18	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	xcomp	_	_
19	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	iobj	_	_
20	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	18	obj	_	_
21	of	of	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
22	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	Princess	Princess	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	20	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **spend** | past | loss |  |  |  | year |  | vn consume-66-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **travel** | gerund | loss *not said here* |  |  | forests and wildernesses |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme through forest=Trajectory |
| 3 | **find** | could | loss *not said here* | no one |  |  |  | able *property* | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent one=Topic |
| 4 | **tell** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | no one *not said here* | anything | loss |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent he=Recipient anything=Topic |

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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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