---
title: He sat down and thought over the matter a long time, and at last he… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He sat down and thought over the matter a long time, and at last he made a plan. Who acts: foot. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water., sentence 12

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He sat down and thought over the matter a long time, and at last he made a plan.

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**Who acts:** foot · **What happens:** sit down, think, make · **To what, where:** matter, plan, last

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (foot), 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:pg641:16:12
# text = He sat down and thought over the matter a long time, and at last he made a plan.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	down	down	ADP	RP	_	2	compound:prt	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	thought	think	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	conj	_	_
6	over	over	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	matter	matter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
14	at	at	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	last	last	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	_
16	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
17	made	make	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	plan	plan	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit down** | past | foot |  |  |  |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* | participle | foot *not said here* |  |  | the matter | time |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **make** | past | foot | a plan |  | last |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent plan=Product |

<!-- .note -->
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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