---
title: Then the servant told him they had lost their way, and wanted some o… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Then the servant told him they had lost their way, and wanted some one to show it them. Who acts: servant, servants, one. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Jack My Hedgehog, 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/pg7277/48/39/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, Jack My Hedgehog, sentence 39

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Then the servant told him they had lost their way, and wanted some one to show it them.

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**Who acts:** servant, servants, one · **What happens:** tell, lose, want, show · **To what, where:** Jack, way, one · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Jack My Hedgehog. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (servant, servants, one), 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:pg7277:48:39
# text = Then the servant told him they had lost their way, and wanted some one to show it them.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	servant	servant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	iobj	_	_
6	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	lost	lose	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	4	ccomp	_	_
9	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	wanted	want	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
14	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	15	det	_	_
15	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	show	show	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	_
18	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obj	_	_
19	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | the servant |  | Jack |  | then |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent he=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **lose** | past · perfect | servants *= servant* | servants's way |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent way=Eventuality |
| 3 | **want** | past | the servant *not said here* | some one |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **show** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | some one *not said here* | way |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent it=Recipient they=Topic |

<!-- .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.

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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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