---
title: Wondering at this strange order, the prince picked up his knife and… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Wondering at this strange order, the prince picked up his knife and severed the dove’s head from her body at one stroke. Who acts: prince. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Prince Who Wanted to See the World, 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/pg641/42/38/)

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Prince Who Wanted to See the World, sentence 38

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Wondering at this strange order, the prince picked up his knife and severed the dove’s head from her body at one stroke.

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**Who acts:** prince · **What happens:** wonder, pick up, sever · **To what, where:** strange order, knife, head, body

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Prince Who Wanted to See the World. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (prince), 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:pg641:42:38
# text = Wondering at this strange order, the prince picked up his knife and severed the dove’s head from her body at one stroke.
1	Wondering	wonder	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	advcl	_	_
2	at	at	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
3	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	det	_	_
4	strange	strange	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	order	order	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	prince	prince	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
9	picked	pick	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	up	up	ADP	RP	_	9	compound:prt	_	_
11	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	knife	knife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	severed	sever	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	dove	dove	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’s	's	PART	POS	_	16	case	_	_
18	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	_
19	from	from	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	21	nmod:poss	_	_
21	body	body	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
22	at	at	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
23	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	24	nummod	_	_
24	stroke	stroke	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wonder** *speech: ask* | gerund | the prince *not said here* |  |  | this strange order |  |  | vn care-88.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **pick up** | past | the prince | prince's knife |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent knife=Topic |
| 3 | **sever** | past | the prince *not said here* | the dove's head |  | daughter's body |  | at one stroke | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP PP»: agent=Agent head=Theme from body=Initial\_Location |

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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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