---
title: He climbed the tree and began to eat steadily. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He climbed the tree and began to eat steadily. Who acts: John. 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/pg7277/22/247/)

<!-- 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/) / 247

# The Green Fairy Book, The Little Soldier, sentence 247

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He climbed the tree and began to eat steadily.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** John · **What happens:** climb, begin, eat · **To what, where:** tree

<!-- .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 (John), 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:pg7277:22:247
# text = He climbed the tree and began to eat steadily.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	climbed	climb	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
9	steadily	steadily	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **climb** | past | John | the tree |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Initial\_Location tree=Theme |
| 2 | **begin** | past | John *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **eat** | to-infinitive | John *not said here* |  |  |  |  | steadily *property* | vn eat-39.1-1 «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 246](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/22/246/)
- next →: [sentence 248](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/22/248/)
- ↑ back to [The Little Soldier](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/22/)