---
title: There was a gleam of legs, and instantly the lagoon seemed deserted. — Peter Pan · tree and pragmatics
description: There was a gleam of legs, and instantly the lagoon seemed deserted. Who acts: gleam. A sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter VIII. THE MERMAIDS’ LAGOON, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Peter Pan, Chapter VIII. THE MERMAIDS’ LAGOON, sentence 47

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There was a gleam of legs, and instantly the lagoon seemed deserted.

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**Who acts:** gleam · **What happens:** be, desert · **To what, where:** lagoon

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This is a sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter VIII. THE MERMAIDS’ LAGOON. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (gleam), 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:pg16:9:47
# text = There was a gleam of legs, and instantly the lagoon seemed deserted.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	gleam	gleam	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	legs	leg	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
9	instantly	instantly	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	lagoon	lagoon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj:pass	_	_
12	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux:pass	_	_
13	deserted	desert	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a gleam of legs |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **desert** | past · passive |  | the lagoon |  |  |  | instantly *property* | vn leave-51.2-1 «NP V NP.initial\_location»: subject=Source |

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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:** «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Project Gutenberg book 16 (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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