---
title: And the Prince answered, ‘They are pursuing us hotly and are quite c… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And the Prince answered, ‘They are pursuing us hotly and are quite close.’ Who acts: Prince, hoofs. 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 51

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And the Prince answered, ‘They are pursuing us hotly and are quite close.’

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**Who acts:** Prince, hoofs · **What happens:** answer, pursue, be · **To what, where:** us · **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 (Prince, hoofs), 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:pg7277:28:51
# text = And the Prince answered, ‘They are pursuing us hotly and are quite close.’
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	Prince	Prince	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
6	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
9	pursuing	pursue	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	ccomp	_	_
10	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	_
11	hotly	hotly	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
13	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
14	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	close	close	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | the Prince |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **pursue** | present · progressive | hoofs *= hoof* | us |  |  |  | hotly *property* | vn chase-51.6 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent we=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | present | hoofs *= hoof* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | close *property* | tree rules |

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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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