---
title: So he came before her and propounded his riddle. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: So he came before her and propounded his riddle. Who acts: son. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Riddle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/47/33/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Green Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/) / [The Riddle](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/47/) / 33

# The Green Fairy Book, The Riddle, sentence 33

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
So he came before her and propounded his riddle.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** son · **What happens:** come, propound, riddle · **To what, where:** riddle

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Riddle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (son), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg7277:47:33
# text = So he came before her and propounded his riddle.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	before	before	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obl	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	propounded	propound	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
8	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	riddle	riddle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | son |  |  |  | before Princess |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme before she=Location |
| 2 | **propound** | past | son *not said here* | son's riddle |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **riddle** |  | son |  |  |  |  |  | nom riddle «communication intransitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 32](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/47/32/)
- next →: [sentence 34](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/47/34/)
- ↑ back to [The Riddle](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/47/)