---
title: Then the maiden turned the ball thrice in her hand, and cried, — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Then the maiden turned the ball thrice in her hand, and cried, Who acts: maiden. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Prince, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Grateful Prince, part 3, sentence 8

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Then the maiden turned the ball thrice in her hand, and cried,

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**Who acts:** maiden · **What happens:** turn, cry · **To what, where:** ball thrice

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Prince, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (maiden), 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:pg641:11:8
# text = Then the maiden turned the ball thrice in her hand, and cried,
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	maiden	maiden	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	turned	turn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	ball	ball	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	_
7	thrice	thrice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	hand	hand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **turn** | past | the maiden | the ball thrice |  |  | then | in maiden's hand | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP PP.recipient PP.theme»: agent=Agent thrice=Patient in hand=Topic |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | the maiden *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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