---
title: But after a while, his secret, which he had carefully kept, burnt wi… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But after a while, his secret, which he had carefully kept, burnt within him, and he longed to tell it to somebody. Who acts: man. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Goat’s Ears of the Emperor Trojan, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Goat’s Ears of the Emperor Trojan, sentence 12

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But after a while, his secret, which he had carefully kept, burnt within him, and he longed to tell it to somebody.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** keep, long, tell · **To what, where:** man, secret, somebody · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Goat’s Ears of the Emperor Trojan. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg641:6:12
# text = But after a while, his secret, which he had carefully kept, burnt within him, and he longed to tell it to somebody.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	after	after	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	while	while	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	secret	secret	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	13	obj	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj:pass	_	_
11	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	carefully	carefully	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	kept	keep	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	7	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
15	burnt	burnt	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	xcomp	_	_
16	within	within	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
20	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
21	longed	long	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	conj	_	_
22	to	to	PART	TO	_	23	mark	_	_
23	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	21	xcomp	_	_
24	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	23	obj	_	_
25	to	to	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
26	somebody	somebody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	23	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **keep** | past · perfect · passive |  | man |  |  |  | burnt, carefully *property* | vn sustain-55.6-1 «NP V NP ADJ»: subject=Theme which=Attribute |
| 2 | **long** | past | man |  |  |  |  |  | vn long-32.2 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | man *not said here* | secret | somebody |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent it=Topic to somebody=Recipient |

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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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