---
title: So the mermaid took him on her shoulders and bore him up midway to t… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: So the mermaid took him on her shoulders and bore him up midway to the surface. Who acts: mermaid. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 19, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 19, sentence 3

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So the mermaid took him on her shoulders and bore him up midway to the surface.

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**Who acts:** mermaid · **What happens:** take, bear up · **To what, where:** youth, shoulders

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 19. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mermaid), 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:pg3282:19:3
# text = So the mermaid took him on her shoulders and bore him up midway to the surface.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	mermaid	mermaid	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	_
6	on	on	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	shoulders	shoulder	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	bore	bear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
11	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	_
12	up	up	ADP	RP	_	10	compound:prt	_	_
13	midway	midway	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl:unmarked	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	surface	surface	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | the mermaid | youth |  | mermaid's shoulders |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent he=Theme on shoulder=Destination |
| 2 | **bear up** | past | the mermaid *not said here* | youth |  |  |  | to the surface; midway *obl:unmarked* | vn birth-28.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Patient |

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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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