---
title: "Just before dawn, when the guards were sleeping, he came flying dow… — Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "Just before dawn, when the guards were sleeping, he came flying down my chimney. Who acts: guards, dawn. A sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Story of the Unlucky Days, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, The Story of the Unlucky Days, part 3, sentence 29

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"Just before dawn, when the guards were sleeping, he came flying down my chimney.

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**Who acts:** guards, dawn · **What happens:** sleep, come, fly down · **To what, where:** chimney

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This is a sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Story of the Unlucky Days, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (guards, dawn), 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:pg29672:27:29
# text = "Just before dawn, when the guards were sleeping, he came flying down my chimney.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Just	just	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
3	before	before	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	dawn	dawn	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
6	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	10	advmod	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	guards	guard	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
9	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	sleeping	sleep	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	flying	fly	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	13	xcomp	_	_
15	down	down	ADP	RP	_	14	compound:prt	_	_
16	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	chimney	chimney	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sleep** *in a quote* | past · progressive | the guards |  |  |  |  |  | vn snooze-40.4-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **come** *in a quote* | past | dawn |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **fly down** *in a quote* | gerund | dawn *not said here* | my chimney |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «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:** «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», Project Gutenberg book 29672 (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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