---
title: The captain of the robbers took a pen and paper and wrote this letter: — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The captain of the robbers took a pen and paper and wrote this letter: Who acts: captain. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Fish and the Ring, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, The Fish and the Ring, sentence 31

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The captain of the robbers took a pen and paper and wrote this letter:

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**Who acts:** captain · **What happens:** take, write · **To what, where:** pen, letter

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Fish and the Ring. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (captain), 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:pg7439:41:31
# text = The captain of the robbers took a pen and paper and wrote this letter:
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	captain	captain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	robbers	robber	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nmod	_	_
6	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	pen	pen	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	paper	paper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	conj	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	wrote	write	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
13	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	14	det	_	_
14	letter	letter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | the captain of the robbers | a pen and paper |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent pen=Theme |
| 2 | **write** | past | the captain of the robbers *not said here* | this letter |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent letter=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:** «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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