---
title: The roads are so muddy, after the winter’s rains. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The roads are so muddy, after the winter’s rains. Who acts: roads, winter. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 12, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/12/59/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 12, sentence 59

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The roads are so muddy, after the winter’s rains.

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**Who acts:** roads, winter · **What happens:** be, rain

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (roads, winter), 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:pg3282:12:59
# text = The roads are so muddy, after the winter’s rains.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	roads	road	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	so	so	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	muddy	muddy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	after	after	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	winter	winter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’s	's	PART	POS	_	9	case	_	_
11	rains	rain	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | the roads |  |  |  | after the winter's rains | muddy *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **rain** |  | the winter |  |  |  |  |  | nom rain «phenomenon transitive»: poss=agent |

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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 Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (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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