---
title: This was long before daybreak; and then they bustled away as quick a… — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: This was long before daybreak; and then they bustled away as quick as lightning. Who acts: This, shoes. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Elves and the Shoemaker, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Elves and the Shoemaker, sentence 15

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This was long before daybreak; and then they bustled away as quick as lightning.

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**Who acts:** This, shoes · **What happens:** be, bustle away

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Elves and the Shoemaker. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (This, shoes), 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:pg2591:37:15
# text = This was long before daybreak; and then they bustled away as quick as lightning.
1	This	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	long	long	ADJ	RB	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
4	before	before	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	daybreak	daybreak	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	10	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	10	advmod	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	bustled	bustle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
11	away	away	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
12	as	as	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	quick	quick	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	xcomp	_	_
14	as	as	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	lightning	lightning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | This |  |  |  | before long daybreak |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **bustle away** | past | shoes *= shoe* |  |  |  | then | away, quick *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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:** «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 2591 (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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