---
title: The Princess had scarcely tasted it, when the tip of the horns disap… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The Princess had scarcely tasted it, when the tip of the horns disappeared. Who acts: Princess, tip. 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 306

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The Princess had scarcely tasted it, when the tip of the horns disappeared.

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**Who acts:** Princess, tip · **What happens:** taste, disappear · **To what, where:** glass

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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 (Princess, tip), 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:pg7277:22:306
# text = The Princess had scarcely tasted it, when the tip of the horns disappeared.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Princess	Princess	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	scarcely	scarcely	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	tasted	taste	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
8	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	14	advmod	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	tip	tip	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	horns	horn	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nmod	_	_
14	disappeared	disappear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **taste** | past · perfect | the Princess | glass |  |  |  | scarcely *property* | vn seem-109 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Theme it=Attribute |
| 2 | **disappear** | past | the tip of the horns |  |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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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