---
title: The king's son asked this lad if he had seen a big black raven. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The king's son asked this lad if he had seen a big black raven. Who acts: son. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Battle of the Birds, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Battle of the Birds, sentence 36

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The king's son asked this lad if he had seen a big black raven.

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**Who acts:** son · **What happens:** ask, see · **To what, where:** lad, big black raven

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Battle of the Birds. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (son), 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:pg7885:31:36
# text = The king's son asked this lad if he had seen a big black raven.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	's	's	PART	POS	_	2	case	_	_
4	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	det	_	_
7	lad	lad	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	seen	see	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	5	advcl	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
13	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
14	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	raven	raven	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the king's son | this lad |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent lad=Recipient |
| 2 | **see** *a condition, not said to happen* | past · perfect | son | a big black raven |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer raven=Stimulus |

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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:** «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7885 (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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