---
title: It lasted so long that food began to fail, and even in the palace th… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It lasted so long that food began to fail, and even in the palace there was not enough to eat. Who acts: war, food, palace. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Child Who Came From an Egg, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Child Who Came From an Egg, sentence 86

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It lasted so long that food began to fail, and even in the palace there was not enough to eat.

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**Who acts:** war, food, palace · **What happens:** last, begin, fail, not be, eat

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Child Who Came From an Egg. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (war, food, palace), 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:pg641:12:86
# text = It lasted so long that food began to fail, and even in the palace there was not enough to eat.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	lasted	last	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	so	so	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	xcomp	_	_
5	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
6	food	food	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	fail	fail	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
12	even	even	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	palace	palace	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	nsubj	_	_
16	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	17	expl	_	_
17	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
18	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	19	advmod	_	_
19	enough	enough	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	conj	_	_
20	to	to	PART	TO	_	21	mark	_	_
21	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	19	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **last** | past | war |  |  |  |  | long *property* | vn cost-54.2 «NP V NP.value»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **begin** | past | food |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **fail** | to-infinitive | food *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **not** **is** | past | the palace |  |  |  |  | enough *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **eat** | to-infinitive | the palace *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 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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