---
title: Meantime the Prince was travelling on, though the direction he had r… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Meantime the Prince was travelling on, though the direction he had received for his journey were none of the clearest. Who acts: Meantime, Prince, direction. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Heart of Ice, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/14/53/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, Heart of Ice, part 1, sentence 53

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Meantime the Prince was travelling on, though the direction he had received for his journey were none of the clearest.

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**Who acts:** Meantime, Prince, direction · **What happens:** travel on, receive, be, journey · **To what, where:** direction, none

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Heart of Ice, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Meantime, Prince, direction), 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:pg7277:14:53
# text = Meantime the Prince was travelling on, though the direction he had received for his journey were none of the clearest.
1	Meantime	meantime	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	Prince	Prince	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	travelling	travel	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	on	on	ADP	RP	_	5	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
8	though	though	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	direction	direction	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	received	receive	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	10	acl:relcl	_	_
14	for	for	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	journey	journey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
17	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
18	none	none	PRON	NN	PronType=Neg	5	conj	_	_
19	of	of	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	clearest	clear	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	18	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **travel on** | past · progressive | Meantime |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **receive** | past · perfect | Prince | the direction *not said here* |  |  |  | for Prince's journey | vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent direction=Theme |
| 3 | **is a** | past | the direction | none |  |  |  | of the clearest | tree rules |
| 4 | **journey** |  | Prince |  |  |  |  |  | nom journey «act transitive»: poss=agent |

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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 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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