---
title: Then he flew back and told the Prince what he had seen. — The Happy Prince, and Other Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Then he flew back and told the Prince what he had seen. Who acts: Watchman. A sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 2, sentence 19

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Then he flew back and told the Prince what he had seen.

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**Who acts:** Watchman · **What happens:** fly back, tell, see · **To what, where:** Prince · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Watchman), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg902:132`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg902:2:19
# text = Then he flew back and told the Prince what he had seen.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	flew	fly	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	back	back	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	Prince	Prince	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	iobj	_	_
9	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	obj	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
11	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	seen	see	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	9	acl:relcl	_	_
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fly back** | past | Watchman |  |  |  | then |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | Watchman *not said here* |  | the Prince |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent prince=Recipient what=Topic |
| 3 | **see** | past · perfect | Watchman |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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