---
title: Swiftly running across the field came a fox, who, in an instant, had… — Grimm's Fairy Stories · tree and pragmatics
description: Swiftly running across the field came a fox, who, in an instant, had snapped up poor little Tom. Who acts: fox. A sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Travels of Tom Thumb, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimm's Fairy Stories, The Travels of Tom Thumb, sentence 68

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Swiftly running across the field came a fox, who, in an instant, had snapped up poor little Tom.

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**Who acts:** fox · **What happens:** run, come, snap up · **To what, where:** field, poor little Tom

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This is a sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, The Travels of Tom Thumb. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fox), 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:pg11027:1106`): 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:pg11027:22:68
# text = Swiftly running across the field came a fox, who, in an instant, had snapped up poor little Tom.
1	Swiftly	swiftly	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
2	running	run	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	_
3	across	across	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	field	field	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
6	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	fox	fox	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
10	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	17	nsubj	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	instant	instant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
16	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
17	snapped	snap	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	8	acl:relcl	_	_
18	up	up	ADP	RP	_	17	compound:prt	_	_
19	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
20	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	Tom	Tom	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **run** | gerund | a fox *not said here* |  |  | the field |  | swiftly *property* | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme across field=Trajectory |
| 2 | **come** | past | a fox |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **snap up** | past · perfect | a fox | poor little Tom |  |  |  | in a instant | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP PP.recipient PP.theme»: agent=Agent tom=Patient in instant=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:** «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 11027 (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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