---
title: They could do nothing, and the young man remained cold as marble to… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They could do nothing, and the young man remained cold as marble to all their entreaties. Who acts: fingers, young man. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Mogarzea and His Son, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, Mogarzea and His Son, sentence 58

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They could do nothing, and the young man remained cold as marble to all their entreaties.

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**Who acts:** fingers, young man · **What happens:** do, remain · **To what, where:** nothing

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Mogarzea and His Son. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fingers, young man), 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:pg641:44:58
# text = They could do nothing, and the young man remained cold as marble to all their entreaties.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	remained	remain	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
11	cold	cold	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	xcomp	_	_
12	as	as	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	marble	marble	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
15	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	17	det:predet	_	_
16	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	entreaties	entreaty	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | could | fingers *= finger* | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Eventuality |
| 2 | **remain** | past | the young man |  |  |  |  | as marble; to fingers's entreaties; cold *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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