---
title: And what was more strange still, this serpent had the head of a woman. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And what was more strange still, this serpent had the head of a woman. Who acts: serpent. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Soldier, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Little Soldier, sentence 18

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And what was more strange still, this serpent had the head of a woman.

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**Who acts:** serpent · **What happens:** be, have · **To what, where:** head

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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 (serpent), 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:pg7277:22:18
# text = And what was more strange still, this serpent had the head of a woman.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	5	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	5	advmod	_	_
5	strange	strange	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
6	still	still	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	9	det	_	_
9	serpent	serpent	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  | still | strange *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** | past | this serpent | the head of a woman |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=Patient |

<!-- .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.

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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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