---
title: By-and-by the old man came back and they all sat down to dinner. — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: By-and-by the old man came back and they all sat down to dinner. Who acts: old man, they. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 14, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 14, sentence 1

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By-and-by the old man came back and they all sat down to dinner.

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**Who acts:** old man, they · **What happens:** come back, sit down

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 14. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old man, they), 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:pg2435:14:1
# text = By-and-by the old man came back and they all sat down to dinner.
1	By	by	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	by	by	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
9	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	back	back	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
13	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	14	advmod	_	_
14	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	_
15	down	down	ADP	RP	_	14	compound:prt	_	_
16	to	to	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	dinner	dinner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come back** | past | the old man |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **sit down** | past | they |  |  |  |  | to dinner | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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 Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 2435 (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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