---
title: "We'll smother her--smother her!" whispered the Crawling Horrors, an… — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "We'll smother her--smother her!" whispered the Crawling Horrors, and twined themselves round her knees. Who acts: We, Crawling Horrors. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 10, 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/pg14241/24/88/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 10, sentence 88

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"We'll smother her--smother her!" whispered the Crawling Horrors, and twined themselves round her knees.

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**Who acts:** We, Crawling Horrors · **What happens:** smother, whisper, twine · **To what, where:** Ho, Horrors, knees · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 10. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We, Crawling Horrors), 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:pg14241:24:88
# text = "We'll smother her--smother her!" whispered the Crawling Horrors, and twined themselves round her knees.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	'll	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	smother	smother	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
5	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	smother	smother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
8	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
11	whispered	whisper	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	Crawling	Crawling	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	_
14	Horrors	Horror	PROPN	NNPS	Number=Plur	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	twined	twine	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	conj	_	_
18	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	17	obj	_	_
19	round	round	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	21	nmod:poss	_	_
21	knees	knee	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **smother** *in a quote* | future | We |  | Ho |  |  | smother  Ho *obl* | vn fill-9.8-1 «NP V NP.destination»: agent=Agent she=Destination |
| 2 | **whisper** *speech: express* | past | the Crawling Horrors |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **twine** | past | the Crawling Horrors *not said here* | Horrors *= horror* |  | Ho's knees |  |  | vn coil-9.6 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent themselves=Theme round knee=Destination |

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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:** «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 14241 (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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