---
title: But the King declined to believe in the Lion any longer. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the King declined to believe in the Lion any longer. Who acts: King. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Huntsmen, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/43/41/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Twelve Huntsmen, sentence 41

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But the King declined to believe in the Lion any longer.

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**Who acts:** King · **What happens:** decline, not believe

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Huntsmen. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (King), 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:pg7277:43:41
# text = But the King declined to believe in the Lion any longer.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	King	King	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	declined	decline	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	believe	believe	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	in	in	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	Lion	Lion	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
10	any	any	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	longer	long	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **decline** | past | the King |  |  |  |  |  | vn reject-77.2 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **believe** | to-infinitive | the King *not said here* |  |  |  |  | in the Lion; long *property* | vn admire-31.2 «NP V that S»: agent=Experiencer |

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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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