---
title: So he set out to find Burd Ellen. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: So he set out to find Burd Ellen. Who acts: Merlin. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Childe Rowland, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Childe Rowland, sentence 13

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So he set out to find Burd Ellen.

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**Who acts:** Merlin · **What happens:** set out, find · **To what, where:** Burd

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Childe Rowland. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Merlin), 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:pg7439:24:13
# text = So he set out to find Burd Ellen.
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	set	set	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	out	out	ADP	RP	_	3	compound:prt	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
7	Burd	Burd	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
8	Ellen	Ellen	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	flat	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **set out** | past | Merlin |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **find** | to-infinitive | Merlin *not said here* | Burd |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent burd=Topic |

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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:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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