---
title: When it grew late, six tall men came in and brought a coffin. — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: When it grew late, six tall men came in and brought a coffin. Who acts: shudder, six tall men. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was, sentence 163

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When it grew late, six tall men came in and brought a coffin.

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**Who acts:** shudder, six tall men · **What happens:** grow, come in, bring · **To what, where:** coffin

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (shudder, six tall men), 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:pg2591:57:163
# text = When it grew late, six tall men came in and brought a coffin.
1	When	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	grew	grow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	advcl	_	_
4	late	late	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
6	six	six	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	nummod	_	_
7	tall	tall	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
9	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	in	in	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	brought	bring	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	coffin	coffin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **grow** | past | shudder |  |  |  |  | late *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **come in** | past | six tall men |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **bring** | past | six tall men *not said here* | a coffin |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3-1 «NP V NP together»: agent=Agent coffin=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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