---
title: Suddenly she heard a rustling among the willows, and an old woman ap… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Suddenly she heard a rustling among the willows, and an old woman appeared before her. Who acts: river, old woman. 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/pg3282/16/7/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 16, sentence 7

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Suddenly she heard a rustling among the willows, and an old woman appeared before her.

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**Who acts:** river, old woman · **What happens:** hear, appear · **To what, where:** rustling

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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 (river, old woman), 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:pg3282:16:7
# text = Suddenly she heard a rustling among the willows, and an old woman appeared before her.
1	Suddenly	suddenly	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	rustling	rustling	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	among	among	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	willows	willow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
11	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
14	appeared	appear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
15	before	before	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hear** | past | river | a rustling |  |  |  | among the willows; suddenly *property* | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer rustling=Stimulus |
| 2 | **appear** | past | a old woman |  |  |  | before river |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme before she=Location |

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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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