---
title: ’’ They held themselves proudly one against the other, although they… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ’’ They held themselves proudly one against the other, although they were of different sizes. Who acts: Fingers. 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 52

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’’ They held themselves proudly one against the other, although they were of different sizes.

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**Who acts:** Fingers · **What happens:** hold, be · **To what, where:** Fingers

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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 (Fingers), 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:pg640:51:52
# text = ’’ They held themselves proudly one against the other, although they were of different sizes.
1	’’	''	PUNCT	NFP	_	3	punct	_	_
2	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	held	hold	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	3	obj	_	_
5	proudly	proudly	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	3	obj	_	_
7	against	against	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
11	although	although	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
13	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	different	different	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	sizes	size	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hold** | past | Fingers *= finger* | Fingers *= finger* |  |  |  |  | vn conjecture-29.5 «NP V NP to be NP»: agent=Agent themselves=Theme one=Eventuality |
| 2 | **is** | past | Fingers *= finger* |  |  |  |  | of different sizes | 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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