---
title: There goes a straw--well, how it does twist and twirl, to be sure! — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: There goes a straw--well, how it does twist and twirl, to be sure! Who acts: straw. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Story About a Darning-needle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, A Story About a Darning-needle, sentence 36

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There goes a straw--well, how it does twist and twirl, to be sure!

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**Who acts:** straw · **What happens:** go, do, be · **To what, where:** straw, twist

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Story About a Darning-needle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (straw), 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:pg640:51:36
# text = There goes a straw--well, how it does twist and twirl, to be sure!
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	goes	go	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	straw	straw	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	well	well	INTJ	UH	_	2	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	10	advmod	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	does	do	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
11	twist	twist	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	twirl	twirl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
16	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	cop	_	_
17	sure	sure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | present |  | a straw |  | there |  |  | vn meander-47.7 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location straw=Theme |
| 2 | **do** | present | straw | twist and twirl |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent twist=Eventuality |
| 3 | **is** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | sure *property* | tree rules |

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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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