---
title: And the reporters giggled, and each dropped a blot of ink on the flo… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And the reporters giggled, and each dropped a blot of ink on the floor. Who acts: reporters, each. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Steadfast Tin-soldier, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Steadfast Tin-soldier, sentence 177

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And the reporters giggled, and each dropped a blot of ink on the floor.

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**Who acts:** reporters, each · **What happens:** giggle, drop · **To what, where:** blot, floor

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Steadfast Tin-soldier. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (reporters, each), 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:pg640:50:177
# text = And the reporters giggled, and each dropped a blot of ink on the floor.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	reporters	reporter	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	giggled	giggle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
7	each	each	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	8	nsubj	_	_
8	dropped	drop	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	blot	blot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	ink	ink	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	_
13	on	on	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	floor	floor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **giggle** | past | the reporters |  |  |  |  |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **drop** | past | each | a blot of ink |  | the floor |  |  | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent blot=Theme on floor=Destination |

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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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