---
title: The young man then took up an axe and hewed off the monster's three… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The young man then took up an axe and hewed off the monster's three heads. Who acts: young man. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Red Ettin, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, The Red Ettin, sentence 59

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The young man then took up an axe and hewed off the monster's three heads.

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**Who acts:** young man · **What happens:** take up, hew · **To what, where:** axe

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Red Ettin. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (young man), 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:pg7439:26:59
# text = The young man then took up an axe and hewed off the monster's three heads.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
5	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	up	up	ADP	RP	_	5	compound:prt	_	_
7	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	axe	axe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	hewed	hew	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	conj	_	_
11	off	off	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	monster	monster	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	's	's	PART	POS	_	13	case	_	_
15	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	16	nummod	_	_
16	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take up** | past | the young man | a axe |  |  | then |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent axe=Theme |
| 2 | **hew** | participle | the young man *not said here* |  |  |  |  | off the monster's three heads | vn split-23.2 «NP V PP.co-patient»: agent=Patient off head=Co-Patient |

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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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