---
title: He sat at the top of a long table covered with flowers and filled wi… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He sat at the top of a long table covered with flowers and filled with guests. Who acts: emperor. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Boys With the Golden Stars, 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/pg641/35/113/)

<!-- 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 Boys With the Golden Stars](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/35/) / 113

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Boys With the Golden Stars, sentence 113

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He sat at the top of a long table covered with flowers and filled with guests.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** emperor · **What happens:** sit, cover, fill · **To what, where:** top, long table

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Boys With the Golden Stars. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (emperor), 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:pg641:35:113
# text = He sat at the top of a long table covered with flowers and filled with guests.
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	at	at	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	top	top	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	table	table	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
10	covered	cover	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	acl	_	_
11	with	with	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	flowers	flower	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	filled	fill	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	conj	_	_
15	with	with	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	guests	guest	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | past | emperor |  |  | the top of a long table |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent at top=Location |
| 2 | **cover** | participle |  | a long table *not said here* |  |  |  | with flowers | vn fill-9.8-1 «NP V NP PP.theme»: agent=Agent with flower=Theme |
| 3 | **fill** | participle |  |  |  |  |  | with guests | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent with guest=Instrument |

<!-- .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 112](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/35/112/)
- next →: [sentence 114](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/35/114/)
- ↑ back to [The Boys With the Golden Stars](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/35/)