---
title: Then Thakane stepped forward in front of the cattle and sang: — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Then Thakane stepped forward in front of the cattle and sang: Who acts: Thakane. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 16, 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/pg3282/16/55/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 16, sentence 55

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Then Thakane stepped forward in front of the cattle and sang:

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**Who acts:** Thakane · **What happens:** step forward, sing · **To what, where:** front

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Thakane), 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:pg3282:16:55
# text = Then Thakane stepped forward in front of the cattle and sang:
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
2	Thakane	Thakane	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	stepped	step	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	forward	forward	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	front	front	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	cattle	cattle	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nmod	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	sang	sing	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **step forward** | past | Thakane |  |  | front of the cattle | then | forward *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in front=Trajectory |
| 2 | **sing** *speech: express* | past | Thakane *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «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:** «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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