---
title: Petru stopped for a moment when he caught sight of this terrible cre… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Petru stopped for a moment when he caught sight of this terrible creature. Who acts: Petru. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 1, sentence 59

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Petru stopped for a moment when he caught sight of this terrible creature.

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**Who acts:** Petru · **What happens:** stop, catch, sight · **To what, where:** sight, terrible creature

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Fairy of the Dawn, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Petru), 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:pg641:19:59
# text = Petru stopped for a moment when he caught sight of this terrible creature.
1	Petru	Petru	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	stopped	stop	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	for	for	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	moment	moment	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
6	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	8	mark	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	caught	catch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
9	sight	sight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
11	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	13	det	_	_
12	terrible	terrible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	creature	creature	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stop** | past | Petru |  |  |  | moment |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |
| 2 | **catch** | past | Petru | sight of this terrible creature |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sight=Theme |
| 3 | **sight** |  |  | this terrible creature |  |  |  |  | nom sight «cognition transitive»: of=patient |

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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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