---
title: But soon the sound of a soft voice lamenting attracted his attention… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But soon the sound of a soft voice lamenting attracted his attention, and listening intently he heard it say-- Who acts: soft voice, King, attention. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Blue Bird, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Blue Bird, part 2, sentence 46

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But soon the sound of a soft voice lamenting attracted his attention, and listening intently he heard it say--

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**Who acts:** soft voice, King, attention · **What happens:** lament, attract, listen, hear, say, attend · **To what, where:** attention · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Blue Bird, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (soft voice, King, attention), 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:pg7277:3:46
# text = But soon the sound of a soft voice lamenting attracted his attention, and listening intently he heard it say--
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	4	advmod	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	sound	sound	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	voice	voice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	_
9	lamenting	lament	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	acl	_	_
10	attracted	attract	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	xcomp	_	_
11	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	attention	attention	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
15	listening	listen	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	18	csubj	_	_
16	intently	intently	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
17	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
18	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
19	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	obj	_	_
20	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lament** | gerund | a soft voice *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V that S»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **attract** | participle | a soft voice *not said here* | King's attention |  |  |  |  | vn lure-59.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent attention=Patient |
| 3 | **listen** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  | intently *property* | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **hear** | past | King | attention |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 5 | **say** *speech: assert* | infinitive | attention *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 6 | **attend** |  | King |  |  |  |  |  | nom attention «cognition intransitive»: poss=agent |

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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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