---
title: They were all very much surprised, but they gave him something to eat. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They were all very much surprised, but they gave him something to eat. Who acts: feet. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Crab(5), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Golden Crab(5), sentence 14

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They were all very much surprised, but they gave him something to eat.

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**Who acts:** feet · **What happens:** be, give, eat · **To what, where:** something, husband

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Crab(5). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (feet), 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:pg640:7:14
# text = They were all very much surprised, but they gave him something to eat.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
3	all	all	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
4	very	very	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	much	much	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	surprised	surprised	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	gave	give	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
11	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	iobj	_	_
12	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	10	obj	_	_
13	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
14	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | feet *= foot* |  |  |  |  | all, surprised *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **give** | past | feet *= foot* | something | husband |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent he=Recipient something=Theme |
| 3 | **eat** | to-infinitive | feet *= foot* *not said here* | something *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: 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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