---
title: ‘What can be the reason for keeping that lovely Princess a prisoner?… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What can be the reason for keeping that lovely Princess a prisoner?’ cried the King in great indignation. Who acts: reason. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Blue Bird, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Blue Bird, part 1, sentence 69

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‘What can be the reason for keeping that lovely Princess a prisoner?’ cried the King in great indignation.

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**Who acts:** reason · **What happens:** be, keep, cry · **To what, where:** reason, lovely Princess, great indignation

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Blue Bird, 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 (reason), 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:pg7277:2:69
# text = ‘What can be the reason for keeping that lovely Princess a prisoner?’ cried the King in great indignation.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	nsubj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	cop	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	reason	reason	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
7	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
8	keeping	keep	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	6	acl	_	_
9	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	11	nsubj	_	_
10	lovely	lovely	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	Princess	Princess	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	prisoner	prisoner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
16	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	King	King	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
19	in	in	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	indignation	indignation	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	16	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | can |  | the reason |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **keep** | gerund | the reason *not said here* | lovely Princess |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent princess=Theme |
| 3 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | the reason |  |  | great indignation |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in indignation=Location |

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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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