---
title: There he lay on the old woman’s sofa and stared about him in surprise. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: There he lay on the old woman’s sofa and stared about him in surprise. Who acts: smell. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Dwarf Long Nose, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/26/94/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Violet Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/) / [The History of Dwarf Long Nose, part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/26/) / 94

# The Violet Fairy Book, The History of Dwarf Long Nose, part 1, sentence 94

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
There he lay on the old woman’s sofa and stared about him in surprise.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** smell · **What happens:** lie, stare · **To what, where:** sofa, surprise

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Dwarf Long Nose, 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 (smell), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg641:26:94
# text = There he lay on the old woman’s sofa and stared about him in surprise.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	3	expl	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	lay	lie	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	on	on	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’s	's	PART	POS	_	7	case	_	_
9	sofa	sofa	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	stared	stare	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
12	about	about	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obl	_	_
14	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	surprise	surprise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lie** | past | smell |  |  | the old woman's sofa; there |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on sofa=Location |
| 2 | **stare** | past | smell *not said here* |  |  | surprise |  | about smell | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent about he=Theme |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 93](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/26/93/)
- next →: [sentence 95](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/26/95/)
- ↑ back to [The History of Dwarf Long Nose, part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/26/)