---
title: They suspected some secret, but though they spied and spied, they co… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They suspected some secret, but though they spied and spied, they could not discover it. Who acts: woman. 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 38

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They suspected some secret, but though they spied and spied, they could not discover it.

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**Who acts:** woman · **What happens:** suspect, spy, not discover · **To what, where:** secret

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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 (woman), 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:pg640:7:38
# text = They suspected some secret, but though they spied and spied, they could not discover it.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	suspected	suspect	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	4	det	_	_
4	secret	secret	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
7	though	though	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	spied	spy	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	advcl	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	spied	spy	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
13	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
14	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
15	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	16	advmod	_	_
16	discover	discover	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	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 | **suspect** | past | woman | some secret |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V NP ADJ»: agent=Agent secret=Attribute |
| 2 | **spy** | past | woman |  |  |  |  |  | vn sight-30.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **spy** | past | woman *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn sight-30.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer |
| 4 | **not** **discover** | could | woman | secret |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Topic |

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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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