---
title: He sat on the mast of a large vessel and watched the sailors hauling… — The Happy Prince, and Other Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He sat on the mast of a large vessel and watched the sailors hauling big chests out of the hold with ropes. Who acts: Swallow, sailors. A sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg902/1/146/)

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# The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 1, sentence 146

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He sat on the mast of a large vessel and watched the sailors hauling big chests out of the hold with ropes.

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**Who acts:** Swallow, sailors · **What happens:** sit, watch, haul · **To what, where:** mast, sailors, big chests, hold

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This is a sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Swallow, sailors), 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:pg902:1:146
# text = He sat on the mast of a large vessel and watched the sailors hauling big chests out of the hold with ropes.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	on	on	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	mast	mast	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	large	large	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	vessel	vessel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	watched	watch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	sailors	sailor	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obj	_	_
14	hauling	haul	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	13	acl	_	_
15	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	chests	chest	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obj	_	_
17	out	out	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
18	of	of	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	hold	hold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
21	with	with	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	ropes	rope	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | past | Swallow |  |  | the mast of a large vessel |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on mast=Location |
| 2 | **watch** | past | Swallow *not said here* | the sailors |  |  |  |  | vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sailor=Theme |
| 3 | **haul** | gerund | the sailors *not said here* | big chests |  | the hold with ropes |  |  | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP PP.initial\_location»: agent=Agent chest=Theme out hold=Initial\_Location |

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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:** «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Project Gutenberg book 902 (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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