---
title: In front of the castle stood some little trees surrounding a tiny mi… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: In front of the castle stood some little trees surrounding a tiny mirror which looked like a lake. Who acts: little trees, tiny mirror. 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 7

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In front of the castle stood some little trees surrounding a tiny mirror which looked like a lake.

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**Who acts:** little trees, tiny mirror · **What happens:** stand, surround, look · **To what, where:** little trees, front, tiny mirror

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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 (little trees, tiny mirror), 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:pg640:50:7
# text = In front of the castle stood some little trees surrounding a tiny mirror which looked like a lake.
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	front	front	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	castle	castle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
6	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	9	det	_	_
8	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	trees	tree	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	_
10	surrounding	surround	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	acl	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	tiny	tiny	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	mirror	mirror	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
14	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	15	nsubj	_	_
15	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	acl:relcl	_	_
16	like	like	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	lake	lake	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | past |  | some little trees |  | front of the castle |  |  | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent tree=Theme in front=Destination |
| 2 | **surround** | gerund | some little trees *not said here* | a tiny mirror |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme mirror=Co-Theme |
| 3 | **look** | past | a tiny mirror |  |  |  |  | like a lake | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |

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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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