---
title: She taught it to kneel before her, and then she whispered in its ear: — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: She taught it to kneel before her, and then she whispered in its ear: Who acts: Helena. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Biter Bit, part 4, sentence 24

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She taught it to kneel before her, and then she whispered in its ear:

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**Who acts:** Helena · **What happens:** teach, kneel, whisper · **To what, where:** pet, ear

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Helena), 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:pg7277:29:24
# text = She taught it to kneel before her, and then she whispered in its ear:
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	taught	teach	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	kneel	kneel	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
6	before	before	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
10	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	12	advmod	_	_
11	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	whispered	whisper	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	15	nmod:poss	_	_
15	ear	ear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **teach** *speech: other* | past | Helena |  | pet |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent it=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **kneel** | to-infinitive | Helena *not said here* |  |  |  | before Helena |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent before she=Location |
| 3 | **whisper** *speech: assert* | past | Helena |  |  | pet's ear | then |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in ear=Location |

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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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