---
title: But, before he touched it, King Aegeus trembled again. — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But, before he touched it, King Aegeus trembled again. Who acts: Theseus, King. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/4/51/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Tanglewood Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/) / [The Minotaur., part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/4/) / 51

# Tanglewood Tales, The Minotaur., part 2, sentence 51

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But, before he touched it, King Aegeus trembled again.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Theseus, King · **What happens:** touch, tremble · **To what, where:** wine

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., 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 (Theseus, King), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg976:4:51
# text = But, before he touched it, King Aegeus trembled again.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	touched	touch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	advcl	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
8	King	King	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
9	Aegeus	Aegeus	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	flat	_	_
10	trembled	tremble	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	again	again	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **touch** | past | Theseus | wine |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme it=Co-Theme |
| 2 | **tremble** | past | King |  |  |  | again |  | vn modes\_of\_being\_with\_motion-47.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Project Gutenberg book 976 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 50](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/4/50/)
- next →: [sentence 52](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/4/52/)
- ↑ back to [The Minotaur., part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/4/)