---
title: The servants rummaged well, and did not find a thing. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The servants rummaged well, and did not find a thing. Who acts: servants. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Conall Yellowclaw, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, Conall Yellowclaw, sentence 38

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The servants rummaged well, and did not find a thing.

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**Who acts:** servants · **What happens:** rummage, not find · **To what, where:** thing

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Conall Yellowclaw. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (servants), 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:pg7885:9:38
# text = The servants rummaged well, and did not find a thing.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	servants	servant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	rummaged	rummage	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
7	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
8	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	9	advmod	_	_
9	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **rummage** | participle | the servants |  |  |  |  | well *property* | vn rummage-35.5-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **not** **find** | past · do-support | the servants *not said here* | a thing |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thing=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:** «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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