---
title: The King sent for the cards and they sat down to play. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The King sent for the cards and they sat down to play. Who acts: King, cards. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Soldier, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/22/154/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Green Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/) / [The Little Soldier](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/22/) / 154

# The Green Fairy Book, The Little Soldier, sentence 154

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The King sent for the cards and they sat down to play.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** King, cards · **What happens:** send, sit down, play

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Soldier. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (King, cards), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg7277:22:154
# text = The King sent for the cards and they sat down to play.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	King	King	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	sent	send	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	for	for	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	cards	card	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
10	down	down	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	play	play	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **send** | past | the King |  |  |  |  | for the cards | vn confine-92-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **sit down** | past | cards *= card* |  |  |  |  | down *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **play** | to-infinitive | cards *= card* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn performance-26.7-1 «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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 153](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/22/153/)
- next →: [sentence 155](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/22/155/)
- ↑ back to [The Little Soldier](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/22/)