---
title: He was unwilling at first, but the maiden insisted. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He was unwilling at first, but the maiden insisted. Who acts: angel, maiden. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Dragon of the North(2), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Dragon of the North(2), sentence 116

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He was unwilling at first, but the maiden insisted.

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**Who acts:** angel, maiden · **What happens:** unwill, insist

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Dragon of the North(2). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (angel, maiden), 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:pg640:5:116
# text = He was unwilling at first, but the maiden insisted.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	unwilling	unwill	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	at	at	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	maiden	maiden	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	insisted	insist	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **unwill** | past · progressive | angel |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **insist** *speech: other* | past | the maiden |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent |

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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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