---
title: An old man stole softly and slowly up to the castle. — Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains · tree and pragmatics
description: An old man stole softly and slowly up to the castle. Who acts: old man. A sentence of «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, A Historical Tale., part 5, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains, A Historical Tale., part 5, sentence 71

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An old man stole softly and slowly up to the castle.

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**Who acts:** old man · **What happens:** steal

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This is a sentence of «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, A Historical Tale., part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old man), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg74323:22:71
# text = An old man stole softly and slowly up to the castle.
1	An	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	stole	steal	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	softly	softly	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	5	conj	_	_
8	up	up	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	to	to	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	castle	castle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	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 | **steal** | past | a old man |  |  |  |  | up the castle; softly *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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:** «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, Project Gutenberg book 74323 (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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