---
title: In vain did she puzzle over the apparent contradictoriness of his be… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: In vain did she puzzle over the apparent contradictoriness of his behaviour. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine, sentence 69

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In vain did she puzzle over the apparent contradictoriness of his behaviour.

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine. 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:pg7277:12:69
# text = In vain did she puzzle over the apparent contradictoriness of his behaviour.
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
2	vain	vain	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
3	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	compound	_	_
5	puzzle	puzzle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	over	over	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	apparent	apparent	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	contradictoriness	contradictoriness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	behaviour	behaviour	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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The frames reader finds no event or fact in this sentence.

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**Text:** «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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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