---
title: In fear and trembling they returned to tell the Magician what had ha… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: In fear and trembling they returned to tell the Magician what had happened. Who acts: paths. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Biter Bit, part 3, sentence 38

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In fear and trembling they returned to tell the Magician what had happened.

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**Who acts:** paths · **What happens:** tremble, return, tell, happen · **To what, where:** fear, Magician · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (paths), 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:pg7277:28:38
# text = In fear and trembling they returned to tell the Magician what had happened.
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	fear	fear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
4	trembling	tremble	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	conj	_	_
5	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	returned	return	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	Magician	magician	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	13	nsubj	_	_
12	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	happened	happen	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tremble** | gerund | paths *= path* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn modes\_of\_being\_with\_motion-47.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **return** | past | paths *= path* |  |  | fear |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | paths *= path* *not said here* | the Magician |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP what S»: agent=Agent magician=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 4 | **happen** | past · perfect |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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