---
title: They began to tell each other their dreams. — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They began to tell each other their dreams. Who acts: travellers. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, 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/pg2435/2/21/)

<!-- 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/) / [The Crimson Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2435/) / [The Crimson Fairy Book, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2435/2/) / 21

# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 2, sentence 21

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They began to tell each other their dreams.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** travellers · **What happens:** begin, tell, dream · **To what, where:** each · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, 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 (travellers), 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:pg2435:2:21
# text = They began to tell each other their dreams.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	each	each	DET	DT	ExtPos=PRON|PronType=Rcp	4	obj	_	_
6	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	fixed	_	_
7	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	dreams	dream	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past | travellers *= traveller* |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | travellers *= traveller* *not said here* | each |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent each=Recipient dream=Topic |
| 3 | **dream** |  | travellers *= traveller* |  |  |  |  |  | nom dream «cognition transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .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:** «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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2435/2/20/)
- next →: [sentence 22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2435/2/22/)
- ↑ back to [The Crimson Fairy Book, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2435/2/)