---
title: Half drowned, and more than half choked, the two faithful servants s… — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Half drowned, and more than half choked, the two faithful servants scrambled back to land again. Who acts: Half, two faithful servants. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 15, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 15, sentence 24

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Half drowned, and more than half choked, the two faithful servants scrambled back to land again.

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**Who acts:** Half, two faithful servants · **What happens:** drown, choke, scramble back, land

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 15. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Half, two faithful servants), 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:pg3027:15:24
# text = Half drowned, and more than half choked, the two faithful servants scrambled back to land again.
1	Half	half	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing|NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	2	nsubj	_	_
2	drowned	drown	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
5	more	more	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp|ExtPos=ADV	7	advmod	_	_
6	than	than	ADP	IN	_	5	fixed	_	_
7	half	half	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing|NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	8	nsubj	_	_
8	choked	choke	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
11	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	13	nummod	_	_
12	faithful	faithful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	servants	servant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nsubj	_	_
14	scrambled	scramble	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
15	back	back	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	land	land	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	xcomp	_	_
18	again	again	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **drown** | past | Half |  |  |  |  |  | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **choke** | participle | half |  |  |  |  |  | vn die-42.4-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **scramble back** | past | the two faithful servants |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **land** | to-infinitive | the two faithful servants *not said here* |  |  |  | again |  | vn pocket-9.10-1 «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:** «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (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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