---
title: But still the king was stiff-necked and would promise nothing. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But still the king was stiff-necked and would promise nothing. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Prince, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Grateful Prince, part 1, sentence 11

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But still the king was stiff-necked and would promise nothing.

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**What happens:** neck, promise · **To what, where:** king, nothing

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Prince, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg641:9:11
# text = But still the king was stiff-necked and would promise nothing.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
2	still	still	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj:pass	_	_
5	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux:pass	_	_
6	stiff	stiff	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	necked	neck	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	promise	promise	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	conj	_	_
12	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **neck** | past · passive |  | the king |  |  | still |  | vn marry-36.2 «NP V NP»: subject=Co-Agent |
| 2 | **promise** *speech: promise* | would |  | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn future\_having-13.3 «NP V NP.theme (PP)»: agent=Agent nothing=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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