---
title: One post only was empty, and as they passed it cried out: — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: One post only was empty, and as they passed it cried out: Who acts: One post, horses, post. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples, sentence 98

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One post only was empty, and as they passed it cried out:

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**Who acts:** One post, horses, post · **What happens:** be, pass, cry out

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (One post, horses, post), 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:pg641:7:98
# text = One post only was empty, and as they passed it cried out:
1	One	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	nummod	_	_
2	post	post	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	only	only	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
5	empty	empty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	passed	pass	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	parataxis	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	conj	_	_
13	out	out	ADP	RP	_	12	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | One post |  |  |  |  | empty *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **pass** | past | horses *= horse* |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **cry out** *speech: express* | past | post |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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.

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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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