---
title: And hastily assembling whatever soldiers happened to be at hand he s… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And hastily assembling whatever soldiers happened to be at hand he set off at once to meet the enemy. Who acts: whatever, 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.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/35/28/)

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Boys With the Golden Stars, sentence 28

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And hastily assembling whatever soldiers happened to be at hand he set off at once to meet the enemy.

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**Who acts:** whatever, emperor · **What happens:** assemble, happen, be, set off, meet · **To what, where:** hand, enemy

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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 (whatever, emperor), 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:pg641:35:28
# text = And hastily assembling whatever soldiers happened to be at hand he set off at once to meet the enemy.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	hastily	hastily	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	assembling	assemble	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	whatever	whatever	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	6	nsubj	_	_
5	soldiers	soldier	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
6	happened	happen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	ccomp	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
8	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	cop	_	_
9	at	at	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	hand	hand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	set	set	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	acl:relcl	_	_
13	off	off	ADP	RP	_	12	compound:prt	_	_
14	at	at	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	12	obl	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	meet	meet	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	advcl	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	enemy	enemy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **assemble** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  | hastily *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **happen** | past | whatever |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | to-infinitive |  |  |  | hand |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **set off** | past | emperor | hand *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn engender-27.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Precondition hand=Patient |
| 5 | **meet** | to-infinitive | emperor *not said here* | the enemy |  |  |  |  | vn meet-36.3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent enemy=Co-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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